Archive for the ‘American culture’ Category

There is something to be said for American leftists who do not attempt to disguise the fact that they are, in fact, hard core, moonstruck leftists. It’s somewhat refreshing – in a perverse sort of way – observing an angry moonbat from the dark side of the aisle allowing his or her totalitarian feathers to bristle in the breeze a little bit. In the spirit of “clarity over agreement” (the main credo of radio talk show host Dennis Prager), I almost feel the need to applaud those who comprise that most resplendent group of ungrateful, morally bereft leftist dullards – those who make no bones about their veneration for despotism and tyranny.

On those occasions when I am afforded the opportunity to listen to the bemoaning of some exceedingly wealthy, self-centered, elitist ingrate – one who has reaped the benefits of being a citizen of the freest nation on God’s green Earth – refusing to go through the trouble of having to fake a love of liberty, and instead openly admitting to having a man-crush on authoritarianism, I have to tip my hat.

Indeed, whenever a successful, spoiled-brat, whiny leftist – perhaps an athiest to boot – steps up and says that an oligarchy would be good for this country, I walk away a little impressed.

Why?

Because some people don’t realize (or care) how mournfully demented and dim-witted they sound – and that’s a quality almost worth admiring.

However, there’s an illuminating point to be made here.

Note how such courageous declarations usually don’t take place on American soil. Generally, these brave loonbuckets make sure their feet are planted on foreign ground before they spew their excremental pontifications, often speaking to small, out-of–the-way media outlets that will all but be ignored by the American mainstream media.

And they’re right.

If not for the conservative blogosphere, no one would ever hear these things.

Take the latest commentary from film director, Woody Allen – a man who has the distinction of being his own (unofficial) step-daughter’s husband.

It turns out that Woody is not only in love with President Barack Obama – in that “wow, he is totally awesome” Elena Kagan sort of way – but he thinks “a lot of good stuff” could come from an Obama dictatorship.

Woody Allen wants Barack Obama to be dictator for for a few years so that he can completely socialize America. The article published today, May 15, 2010, did not make it into any English-language paper. The article quotes Allen as saying [first in Spanish, then in English from a trusted reader] –

“…it would be good…if he could be a dictator for a few years because he could do a lot of good things quickly.”

Of course, this comes as a complete shock.

What is it with these leftist loons and their passion for socialist dictators?

… because according to that master-theorist and intellectualist, Woody Allen, a quick perusal of the history of dictatorships on planet Earth has sufficiently proven to him that an Obama-led dictatorship could actually reap a lot of “good stuff” for the American people.

Besides, according to Allen, Obama is “cool” – perhaps, the most important criterion of an effective leader to a leftist.

What could be better for America than a “cool dictator?”

Stalin, for instance, had that push-broom moustache and wore heavy wool. Very uncool.

Hitler’s cookie duster was painfully small, and his boots were loud. Besides, he wasn’t very good looking and couldn’t make shots from outside the arc. Squaresville.

And Mao? Sure, he may have been a philosophical superman, but he didn’t exactly have matinee-idol appeal and certainly wasn’t hip to the latest tunes.

A loser, really.

Barack Obama, however, is “cool” … and if you can’t take the word of a man who is married to a girl he met when she was ten (and he was forty-five), who can you trust?

Add to that the fact that Barack Obama is “brilliant,” and one can actually begin to understand why someone like Allen doesn’t bother believing in God. Why should he? An invisible Supreme Being living “up in the sky” hung up on millenia-old morals could never match up, in terms of style and substance, with Chicago’s favorite teleprompted metrosexual socialist.

Note how that seems to be the superlative of choice among libs in describing the President: “brilliant.”

Exactly why Barack Obama is supposed to be so “brilliant” has yet to be revealed, but he continues to trigger orgasmic adulation among those who still look to Neil Young and David Crosby for their political inspiration. Exactly what he has done to warrant such an assessment has yet to be realized, but he does enjoy waffles – just like us common folk do.

That the President’s head moves like a well-greased weather vane from side to side as he switches from one teleprompter to another could be part of it.

It’s been played so much in recent times, handled by so many Obamacrats, that the race card must be nothing more than a mass of frayed wood pulp and lint by now.

From the party of tolerance, acceptance, character-over-color, unity, and plummeting poll numbers comes the latest appeal to potential voters, from none other than the Head Cheese himself.

Try to imagine, if you can, how fast the Reverend Al Sharpton would jettison himself from behind his cheeseburger to find the closest open microphone had a white Republican President, looking to garner support for an upcoming election, said: “It will be up to you to make sure the young people, Caucasians, folks of European descent, and men who powered our victory in 2008 stand together once again. It will be up to each of you to keep our nation moving forward, to keep working to fix Washington, to keep growing our economy, and to keep building a fairer, stronger and more just America.”

Arteries would be bursting in the necks of liberals everywhere.

The collective sound of millions of liberal conniptions would wake the dead and trigger seismograph activity across the globe.

It would be uglier than a surfboardless Keanu Reeves trying to act.

Thank God we don’t have to worry about such things. Thank God there is a Messiah “in da house.”

It is, once again, a Kumbaya liberal bringing all of America together (except those reluctant Limbaugh wing nuts) by breaking out that old tattered race card in the name of justice, fairness and whole lot of blah, blah, blah.

Everybody’s president has spoken.

And no, the Reverend Al Sharpton won’t be needed this time around.

And why not?

Because the President did not single out Caucasians. Instead, Obama appealed to African-Americans.

The President never mentioned “folks of European descent.” Rather, he kept his focus on Latinos.

And Obama did not reach out to men, God forbid. Instead, he was all about the female vote (i.e., the pro-abortion chicks).

Yes, the President of the United States actually said those words in a clip put out by the Democratic National Committee yesterday.

That’s because “fair” means singling out specific races and ethnicities. That’s because “just” means taxing the so-called “rich” – the job creators in this country – even more so that those who don’t earn it themselves can get it anyway. That’s because “stronger” means punishing those who succeed instead of trying to elevate those who haven’t (without handouts).

As Dems continue to do their best to label the Tea Party movement as “racist” and “angry” and “exclusionary,” it is the President himself who just cannot seem to free himself from his own skin-color and ethnicity fixation.

I humbly ask: Who exactly is the divider?

Has there ever been a man to occupy the Office of President of the United States (as well as the Office of President-Elect) who was less Presidential than he?

As I did last year, I’d like to take this opportunity to share with you how I intend to spend Earth day, 2010.

As a rule, I prefer to keep the details of my personal life as private as possible, but in this age of environmental awareness and climate dysfunctionality, I thought it might be illuminating to share some of the more choice tidbits that are taking up slots on my Earth Day docket, the forty-first annual Earth Day.

I’ll forego the morning hygiene rituals and move right into the meat of my morning.

The first thing I will do upon rising is run out to the driveway and warm up my diesel-engine car for thirty minutes (even though it doesn’t need it). I will then enlist my twin daughters to help me turn on every television and radio in the house after giving each toilet a good flush. I will, of course, make sure we throw sizeable wads of triple-ply bathroom tissue into each bowl before doing so.

And don’t think I won’t be scolding them if they forget to leave the refrigerator door open.

I will, of course, then have them separate the laundry into thirty-six different loads and place them on the floor around the washing machine so that we might needlessly run the washer and dryer for three weeks.

After we finish breakfast – which we will eat on styrofoam plates – I will max out my carbon credit card by throwing the empty plastic milk container into the regular garbage pail instead of the recyclables can.

(I’m a wild man, I know).

I will then drive my daughters to school while puffing on a cigar with the window open, making sure the exhaled smoke fills as much of the lower atmosphere as possible. By the time I return home – emitting fifty miles worth of diesel engine pollutants into the air along the way – I will stop off to buy paper towels and more bathroom tissue. (While I do keep Handi Wipes in the kitchen under the sink, I find reusable rags somewhat disgusting. It’s easier and far more satisfying to fill my garbage cans – and ultimately the landfills – with endless clumps of paper towels.

In fact, I know I will get so caught up in the spirit of the day that I will purposely create spills in the kitchen just to go through an entire roll of super-absorbancy paper towels before 11AM. It will be as exhilarating as it will be inspiring … and messy.

As far as bathroom tissue is concerned, let’s just say there won’t be many septic tanks sending me happy notes.

I will then walk around the house arbitrarily spraying aerosol cans into the air.

Borrowing my friend’s fossil-fuel munching Hummer, I plan on driving around in circles until I find a Chinese Restaurant that specializes in MSG-laden foods and uses only energy-inefficient gas guzzlers to make their neighborhood deliveries.

Following lunch, I will go back to the supermarket and buy up all of their reusable “enviro-friendly” green shopping bags so that everyone who visits the store after me can get their groceries stuffed into those landfill choking “plastic” bags.

Before returning home, I will pull off to the side of the road and let the Hummer idle for three-and-a-half hours while I cut up the reusable grocery bags into kitty litter box liners.

Then, as I pull into my driveway, I will remember that I need to go out and run twelve more errands. I will drive the Hummer into Manhattan and purchase a little egg timer (as suggested by some of the Earth Day literature I had been looking at yesterday) so that I might be able to time my showers in the future to save water … and the planet.

Baths kill.

When I finish with my dozen errands, I will drop off the Hummer at my friend’s place and sit in my idling diesel car for fifty-eight minutes as I reflect on my busy afternoon, puffing on yet another cigar, contemplating the earth’s fragility and the Mets’ lousy offense.

Later, I hope to find some time to plant a tree in honor of Earth Day, as President Barack Obama and former-President Bill Clinton did last year, but I’ll almost certainly wind up eating two Yodels and cleaning up after the dog instead.

After a quick bout of global warming-inducing flatulence, I will watch an episode of “The Critic,” take a Tylenol, and go to sleep.

In the grand scheme of things, a person’s race is the least relevant factor to me in determining appeal, worth or moral fiber. On the list of things that matter to me when assessing someone’s merits, his or her favorite fifteenth century Gaelic philosophers carry more weight than skin tone.

Because I am not a modern liberal, I do not obsess over one’s race. Amidst the trials, tribulations and travels of my daily life routine, I just couldn’t care less. I respect Thomas Sowell, for instance, because he is a brilliant thinker and writer, not because he’s black. I oppose almost everything Barack Obama does politically because he’s an inexperienced, in-over-his-head, arrogant, leftist, not because he’s black. By the same token, I dislike Michael Steele because, as Chairman of the RNC, he’s an incompetent clod, not because he’s black.

To that end, I think Black History Month should be abolished. I believe the Black Congressional Caucus needs to be disbanded and tossed onto the ash heep of history. And if Martin Luther King Jr. has a national holiday in his honor – and I certainly think he should – then the mockery that is “President’s Day” needs to be wiped off the calendar and George Washington’s Birthday reinstated as a federal holiday. (How is it that arguably the greatest American of them all is lumped into a catch-all, mattress-sale day that includes such giants as Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and Jimmy Carter?)

I would ask … What exactly does a “post-racial” America look like in the eyes of those who say there is still much work yet to be done in the ever-contentious area of race relations? How would such a nation look to those who still see everything through the prism of race? How do we know when we get there? Is it even possible to do so? Or do race baiters, victicrats, excuse-makers and pop culture icons continue to define the parameters of the game?

No one is denying that racists exist in America. But America is not a racist nation. There also exist pink-haired teenagers, but we are not a pink-haired teenage nation. There are atheists in America as well, but we are not an atheist nation.

We are the United States of America – one nation under God.

We are the freest, most accommodating, most welcoming nation the world has ever known. We are the least racist nation on earth.

Enough already.

(Deep breath)

You may ask, “Okay, Andy, what prompted you to write this today?”

Recall that when Barack Obama was still a candidate, back in the summer of 2008, he spoke out against Rene Marie. You may remember that Marie sparked quite a controversy when she unexpectedly sang what is known as the “black national anthem” before Mayor John Hickenlooper’s “State of the City” address in Denver, Colorado. She did so without anyone’s prior knowledge or approval, saying later that, “I realize the mayor’s State of the City address was not my personal platform, I know that. But an artist tends to take advantage of situations where we can make an artistic statement, we tend to do that. I like knowing that my art leads to dialogue.”

At the time, Barack Obama said that America had only one national anthem – the Star Spangled Banner – and that Marie was wrong to do what she did. Marie said, “I am not signing the national anthem anymore, it just doesn’t represent me.”

Fast forward to February, 2010.

The White House hosted a concert a couple of nights ago called, “In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement.” It was a Black History Month celebration featuring a slew of black artists, civil-rights era performers, and other dancing Obamacrats.

The grand finale was the singing of ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ – the black national anthem.

Barack Obama joined the artists on stage, grabbed a microphone and sang along.

No, they weren’t singing the national anthem. They were singing the “black national anthem.”

There he was – the leader of the free world – shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Smokey Robinson and Morgan Freeman, not singing God Bless America or America the Beautiful, but rather, singing the song better known as the “black national anthem.” There he was, the President of all the United States – the President of all Americans, regardless of race, color, creed, religion,or party affiliation – up on stage in the People’s House, singing the “black national anthem.”

Did I miss the on-ramp to “post-racial America?”

Is he kidding me?

Is this the same man who said he wouldn’t wear that “flag pin” on his lapel? Is this the same man who wouldn’t say the Pledge Of Allegiance? Or put his hand over his heart? Is this the guy who, as the most powerful man in the world, apologized on several occassions for his own country on foreign soil? Or the one who bowed to foreign heads of state? And the Mayor of Tampa? Or the one who laughed when Wanda Sykes made tasteless jokes about Rush Limbaugh’s death?

Yes. The same.

There may be only one national anthem, but there are obviously two Barack Obamas (or more) – the less-threatening, all-race-friendly President of all the people (save for conservatives) … and the one who finds no problem getting on stage and singing the “black national anthem” at the White House.

I will hand over the deed to my house to the first passer-by the day we see Barack Obama grabbing a microphone and singing the national anthem on stage with anyone anywhere.

Or God Bless America.

Or America the Beautiful.

Incidentally, the President hosted a meeting yesterday with “black leaders” to discuss the economy – including the race-baiting, riot-inciting hate-merchant, Al Sharpton. NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, in the spirit of post-raciality, compared Senate Republicans to “Dixiecrats” who blocked civil right legislation over over four decades ago. Said Jealous: “If the Senate Republicans want to kind of keep on using tactics … from the last century that were used against black people in this century, against working people, then we’re going to hold them to account.”

This has been some post-racial era since the dawn of the Messianic Age, hasn’t it? The topic of race relevancy was supposed to (finally) be an archaic one – or at least one that simply wasn’t going to matter nearly as much anymore – where the significance of American skin tone was going to be irrelevant; where character would finally triumph over color.

The long-desired colorblind American society would, at long last, be upon us once Barack Obama hit the White House and started transforming things – and if, after saving America (and the world) by his mere presence there still existed a surplus of disunity in the country, it could then be rightfully blamed on stubborn conservative racists unwilling to meet the future.

Remember, Obama’s election was “historic,” “groundbreaking,” “game-changing” and whatever other blah-blah-blahs were tendered by the orgasmic media. A new era of understanding, universal love, snuggly puppies and big fat hugs was being ushered in, despite a significant portion of America’s population unwilling to let go of its racist, unjust, slave-owning, prejudice, exploitative past. During the campaign season, news outlets opted to pay minimal attention to Barack Obama’s actual message, choosing instead to latch on to his wonderful sounding platitudes, treating each word he uttered as if it had never before been heard by human beings. They didn’t bother to focus too much on his history (what little we were able to learn), or on his glaring lack of experience (unlike the detailed scrutiny given Sarah Palin). Instead, the media made the 2008 Presidential election all about his skin color – and that alone became the message: he’s black, vote for him, love him, let him take care of things.

It was left’s finest hour.

Barack Obama’s “blackness” made a whole bunch of things okay that probably would have been subjected to far more scrutiny had he been anyone else: an association with a known terrorist, having an anti-American race-baiter for a spiritual mentor, his unambiguous support of redistributing wealth, etc.

After Obama’s election, instead of race issues finally becoming the promised societal dinosaurs they deserve to be, the indomitable crusaders of the left sprung into action, hell-bent on seeking out and proving that racism still existed in this country, lest their own existences be rendered meaningless. In short order, as many had predicted, it became perfectly legitimate to conclude that racism played some of sort of role when one stood up to disagree with Barack Obama. Indeed, in the minds of many, to oppose him was to oppose the election of a black man. Democrat after Democrat told us so.

One thing is clear … Democrats are obsessed with race.

Whether it was Hillary Clinton talking about Ghandi running a gas station in St. Louis, Joe Biden commenting on how “storybook” it was that Barack Obama – a black man – was so clean and articulate, or Sonia Sotomayor talking about the superior judgment capacity of Latinas over whites, Democrats have been no strangers to foot-in-mouth disease. They get away with far more than any conservative ever could because the media presumes to know what exists in the hearts of Democrats – and to liberals, nothing matters more.

Their intentions are good, and that is the bottom line as far as the media is concerned.

Personally, I couldn’t care less what is in a politician’s heart. I don’t care what he or she thinks, and I certainly don’t care what they say in private. I care only about their public actions and statements – not their private ones (unless, obviously, they are breaking the law or are plotting to do so). I care about the deeds of people, not what may or may not be buried in their hearts. Their feelings may matter on a micro level, but on a macro level, their feelings are irrelevant to me.

Let’s say, for instance, a man privately wrestles with feelings of anti-Semitism, for whatever reason. If that man, conflicted as he may be, still manages to do good works that benefit the Jewish community – charity work, for instance – then his feelings are as irrelevant to me as his skin color, his favorite song or what toothpaste he uses. I don’t care. Neither do those in need. His deeds are what matters. Isn’t it more desirable to have someone who may be struggling with their faith or their prejudices doing good for others than to have someone who espouses togetherness and harmony doing nothing? I believe this with ever fiber of my being. As a Jew, it doesn’t matter to me what someone thinks. I care what they do.

Let God deal with what exists in a man’s heart.

What makes people good is their ability to weigh thoughts and feelings privately, whatever they may be, and to ultimately choose to do the right thing. Human beings, indeed, are entitled to their private thoughts and feelings, but they are not entitled to act on those feelings.

In this country, with such travesties as “hate crimes” on the books, private thought is being taken into account where it has no business being. The notion that someone’s feelings can lead to harsher penalties for a crime that is already wrong is outrageous.

By the same token, that someone can say something so disgraceful and contemptible – and get away with it – simply because the media presumes to know what is in one’s heart is indicative of a dangerous trend.

In an appearance yesterday on MSNBC, Georgetown Professor Michael Eric Dyson had the following exchange with the anchor woman (whose name is unknown to me at the time of this posting):

Professor Dyson: Let me tell you this: We should push the President. This President runs from race like a black man runs from a cop. What we have to do is ask Mr. Obama to stand up and use his bully pulpit to help us. He is loathe to speak about race … As a result of that, his disinclination to speak about race means that he won’t even take this teachable moment to help America understand. He shouldn’t do that as a black man, by the way. He should do that because he’s President of the United States of America.

MSNBC anchor: We’re out of time, and I certainly appreciate it, but Professor Dyson, I will have to ask you: Are you going to apologize now for saying that the President runs like a black man from the cops, or are you sticking by that one?

Professor Dyson: I’m sticking by that because the brother runs very well, and he’s running like a brother running from a cop.”

I must give credit where credit is due to the anchor; at least she recognized that the professor’s eyebrow raising comments were, at the very least, worthy of revisiting before ending the segment.

But if, according to Dyson, the President needs to “take this teachable moment” (referring to the now infamous remarks made by Harry Reid) and “help America understand” what is going on – not as a black man, but as Chief Executive – then why was was it necessary to use the “black man running from the cops” metaphor? Why call him a “brother” who “runs very well“?

This is what passes for intellectual discourse at the university level?

“A brother who runs very well“?!

Are you kidding me?

If a white man were President, and Harry Reid made the same sort of comments regarding a high-ranking black politician, would anyone say that the President was like a black man running from the cops?

The fact that such a comment would be made at all demonstrates which side remains obsessed with skin color.

Perhaps “Heather Has Two Mommies” would have been more appropriate, or some sort of teen magazine. Maybe even a scratch ‘n sniff Michelle Obama colorforms set.

But the Bible? That book with all the God stuff in it?

Surely, that can’t be permitted, can it?

Isn’t there a law or a commandment that says there shall be no bibles in a public schools because of a separation of church and state amendment somewhere or something?

Not to worry. The principal at Madison Park Elementary School in Parlin, New Jersey is apologizing. One of his teachers simply made a mistake. Of course the Bible can be read by students during quiet time if they so choose – as can any other religious book, for that matter. The teacher was absolutely wrong, said the principal, to make a 3rd Grader put her Bible away during quiet time because it was inappropriate.

Michelle Jordat says her daughter, Mariah, cried when the teacher told her to put away the Bible. Jordat says her daughter’s feelings were hurt and she was confused. “This was injustice,” Jordat says. “No other child has to go through this again.”

Jordat accepted the principal’s apology, but wants something in writing stating that reading the Bible is OK during personal reading time. She also says she will speak to a lawyer. The Old Bridge Board of Education held a meeting Tuesday evening and addressed the issue for concerned parents.

Momma at the great Weasel Zippers blog wonders if the teacher would have said anything had the book been a Qur’an.

Let’s be perfectly honest. Outside of hardcore pornography, is there anything other than a Bible that would have prompted the teacher to order the child to put away what she was reading?

A pamphlet on how to put a condom on a banana?

The Vagina Monologues?

The Communist Manifesto?

I understand she’s only a 3rd Grader. There aren’t too many nine-year-olds reading Karl Marx – not yet anyway. I’m merely making a point.

If not for radical judges who circumvent the will of the people by legislating from the bench, how many states would have legalized same-sex marriage today? (There are currently five). Without these fanatical, agenda-driven, left-wing policy pimps sifting through the penumbras of existing law to magically discover formerly obscured legal epiphanies, would there be any state where same-sex marriage was lawful? In thirty-one prior instances (out of thirty-one), when the redefinition of marriage was brought before the people, the measure has flat-out failed. This has been the case not only in red states, but in the blue ones as well.

Americans simply do not want marriage redefined. And as mystifying as it may be to proponents of same-sex marriage, that does not mean Americans hate gays.

Yet, in what was supposed to be the post-everything era in America, the plague of intolerance is apparently still pervasive, so the story goes.

The proof?

Yesterday afternoon, another shade of east-coast blue was added to the rainbow of intolerance. This time, it was the State of New York.

Indeed, it was not a direct vote of the people – like last year’s Proposition 8 in California, for instance, or last month’s ballot initiative in Maine – but for all intents and purposes, the number of states that have said “no” to redefining marriage is now at thirty-two.

By a vote of 38-24 – a far higher margin than most would have anticipated – the New York State Senate said “no” to a bill that would have made same-sex marriage legal. Eight Democrats were among those who voted to maintain the traditional definition of the institution.

The bill had already passed the State Assembly. This was would have been the final step before the governor’s signature made it law.

The vote means that the bill, pushed by Gov. David A. Paterson, is effectively dead for the year and dashes the optimism of gay rights advocates, who have had setbacks recently in several key states.

…

Mr. Paterson made an unusual trip to the Senate floor minutes after the last vote was cast, saying, “These victories come and so do the losses, but you keep on trying.”

…

The debate was as personal as any to take place in the Senate chamber in years. Senators spoke of their experiences as Jews and Baptists, as blacks and women. They spoke of spending long nights contemplating their votes and the deceased gay friends and relatives who inspired their decision.

Senator Ruth Hassell-Thompson, a Democrat who represents parts of the Bronx and Westchester County, spoke publicly for the first time about her gay brother, who was shunned by her family and moved to France.

To being with, I do sympathize with Senator Hassell-Thompson. I mean that sincerely. But matters of public policy can not be formulated based on emotion. Sound decisions, in any walk of life, can not be scored through emotional filters. The ordeals of her gay brother and family, while heartbreaking and tragic on a micro level, is irrelevant to the macro issue. The adoption of same-sex marriage would have had no bearing on whether or not the senator’s brother was shunned by his family. As callous as that may sound to those whose value sets are defined by their emotions, it isn’t meant to be. What proponents of same-sex marriage fail to realize is that keeping the definition of marriage as it has always been isn’t rooted in hatred of homosexuals, as many gay activists incorrectly charge.

The redefining of marriage to include same-sex couples is a foreign concept in the cumulative of human history. This is not to say that same-sex relationships have been alien to humanity – far from it – but there is no thinker, philosopher, theorist, religious leader, sage, academic, poet or guru who has ever been a proponent of redefining what has been the foundational institution of humankind for millennia.

Not one.

Are we to believe that the gay activists of the last couple of decades posses more wisdom than the whole of humanity that preceded them?

Is sensitivity to be measured by how much one concedes to the requests and desires of given population groups? Is it not possible to be sensitive and sincerely empathetic to the desires of homosexuals on a personal level while wanting to maintain the traditional definition of marriage on a macro level? These are not mutually exclusive positions.

My purpose here is not to once again make the case against same-sex marriage – or even make the case for traditional marriage. Rather, my contention is that matters of public policy, such as the redefining of marriage, are issues that are to be decided by the people – not frustrated judges who are well aware that their radical agendas cannot pass muster with the American electorate, nor by elected representatives who tug on emotional heartstrings in order to win.

Instead of gays demanding that heterosexuals accept their lifestyle choices – while simultaneously admonishing them for butting into their private lives – how about taking a page from the suffrage movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries and try to change minds through good old fashioned grass roots activism? The arduous, decades-long struggle that led to the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 was far more than just a string of angry protest marches. The idea of giving women the right to vote had to be sold.

Instead of lambasting traditionalists and labeling them as “haters” and “bigots,” how about explaining in reasoned tones why the definition of marriage should be changed? How about clarifying in rational terms why the value system that would permit same-sex marriage is better for America than one that recognizes marriage as a union between one man-one woman? How about defending the notion that same-sex marriage is okay, but sibling marriage is not? Or polygamy? Indeed, rallies are fine, but how about getting out there and engaging with the American public through debates, town hall meetings and other interactive forums? How about facing skeptics and detractors in the arena of ideas and present the best case for the legalization of same-sex marriage? Go out and sell it.

That’s how things get done in this country.

There’s no guarantee, of course, that same-sex marriage can be sold. Think of the movement to pass the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. It didn’t fail for lack of activism or trying.

And if the people of my state find themselves persuaded after years of effective “gay rights” campaigning to vote in favor of same-sex marriage, what then can I say about its legitimacy? Despite my vehement opposition to it, I would grudgingly have to cling to my credibility and consistency by conceding that “the people have spoken.” Indeed, I wouldn’t like it, but no one ever guaranteed me complete satisfaction in this life.

It won’t surprise most to learn that talk show host Rush Limbaugh is considered by Americans to be the most influential conservative in the country. In fact, according to a 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll issued yesterday, Limbaugh sits comfortably ahead of the pack with 26% of the tally, 15 points ahead of Glenn Beck.

To many, however, that number sounds too low. Way too low. The general perception persists among influential lefties (i.e., the mainstream media) that all conservative thinkers, talkers and pundits get their daily marching orders from Limbaugh in some form.

He is the puller of strings, issuer of swastikas, and mentor to all who hate.

It cannot be denied that no other conservative can twist the panties of the mainstream media like Limbaugh. They obsesses over no one else on the right like they do Limbaugh. All other conservatives combined don’t draw the attention that Limbaugh does on a daily basis. (Yes, even the current Sarah Palin fervor will subside over time).

But that’s okay.

It has almost become a spectator sport to see which news outlet can take a Limbaugh quote and render it most unrecognizable from its original meaning each day.

Good times.

That the most influential conservative in America is not a politician is both telling and predictable. The reality is, Americans are infinitely more likely to hear conservative values articulated more eloquently and more thoroughly on talk radio than from almost anyone serving in Washington.

Incidentally, both former-Vice President Dick Cheney and former-Governor Sarah Palin came in one point behind Glenn Beck at 10%.

Two other tidbits from the poll are worth touching upon.

First, President John F. Kennedy was chosen by 29% of those polled as the face they’d most like to see added to Mount Rushmore. President Ronald Reagan finished behind him at 20%.

This is not the least bit surprising.

In all honesty, I am actually quite astonished Reagan pulled in as many as 20%. I say so not because Reagan is undeserving. To the contrary, I can think of no one more worthy of such an honor.

Unfortunately, President Reagan is not nearly the popular culture icon JFK is. (Who is?) That Kennedy was a politician is almost secondary. Kennedy is revered much the same way John Lennon, Elvis Presley and James Dean are.

To this day, he personifies “hope” and “promise” and “what might have been.”

Those are big ones on the lefty hit parade.

He was young, charismatic, uncommonly photogenic, as quick on his feet as any one in public life has ever been, and murdered in the prime of his life.

All the ingredients are there.

To this day, Kennedy is regularly referenced and cited by Democrats who long to build bridges to their party’s storied past; and yes, even by Republicans who routinely claim that he’d actually be a conservative on many critical issues by today’s standards. For whatever reason, it seems mighty important to folks on both sides of the aisle that they are able to claim their share of the JFK pie.

Ronald Reagan, meanwhile, couldn’t even muster a mention by the current President during the ceremonies earlier this month commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall. As I recall, there was that whole “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” thing that might have been interesting to bring up, but Reagan’s name never came from Obama’s lips.

Obama did, however, manage to quote JFK.

The President exemplifies how America is hard-wired.

The fact that one of America’s greatest presidents – largely portrayed by the mainstream media as an overrated, yet likable, cowboy who could never have accomplished a damn thing without the great Mikhail Gorbachev to guide him – still manages 20% of the vote behind someone as culturally deified as John Kennedy is quite astounding.

Attaboy, Gipper.

Finally, which of these events did Americans say they would most want to participate in?

Laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier; lighting the Olympic torch; tossing the coin to open a Super Bowl; starting the race at the Indianapolis 500; ringing the opening bell at the stock exchange; or throwing out the first pitch at the World Series?

Believe it or not … half of Americans said that laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns is the ceremony they’d most like to be a part of.

Over the past couple of days, the blogosphere has been rife with commentary on 10-year old Will Phillips, the Arkansas boy who made national news by refusing to stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance until homosexuals are afforded the “right” to marry members of the same sex. To Phillips, there can be no “liberty and justice for all” in a country where sexism and racism exist.

He has been called “brave” by the Left. He has been lauded by gay rights groups as “truly courageous.” He is described as “precocious” by the salivating media. He is a hero to those who continue to view the United States as a bastion of repression and discrimination. He has been praised as having the fortitude to “stand up for what he believes in” – and to the American Leftocracy, there is nothing nobler.

But is that really true?

Is “standing up for what you believe in” the be-all, end-all barometer of honor and integrity?

What if Little Will from Arkansas stood up for white supremacy? Would he still be praised?

The act of “standing up for what one believes in” is, in and of itself, meaningless if the values behind it are no good.

Without rehashing everything Phillips said – and without specifically getting into the same-sex marriage debate – there are three points to be made here.

First, for all of his precociousness and expanded vocabulary, little Will is an enormously foolish and naive child – and no one is bothering to clue him in. (Ironically, his childlike idealism is on par with most adult leftist thought, so he is probably being looked upon as a prodigy of sorts, or a future Democrat Senator). That “liberty and justice for all” is not absolute in America doesn’t mean the ideal is not worth saluting. The United States is not a perfect society; and because imperfect human beings comprise that society, there can never be absolute anything for all citizens. If, in Will’s World, that’s what it takes to be able to say the Pledge, no one will ever be able to say it.

Indeed, “liberty and justice for all” is what America aspires to. It is her ideal. It is what the flag (and the republic for which it stands) represents. It is what men and women have sacrificed their lives to preserve. It is what America has overwhelmingly been able to live up to – certainly far more than any other society the world has ever known. But because there exists a federal government, there will always be some encroachments on liberty – like taxes, for instance.

The irony here is that while young Will ridicules America for not being able to provide “liberty for all,” his leftist agenda undoubtedly means he supports bigger, more intrusive government. Surely, someone as bright, articulate and thesaurus-savvy as he knows that the larger the government gets, the less liberty we the people have, by definition.

It would have been interesting to hear the young leftist’s response to that.

Meanwhile, justice, while blind in theory, will never be perfect in this, or any other, society. We strive to balance the scales as best we can in the pursuit of justice, but it isn’t always possible. Think O.J. Simpson.

Waiting for these “perfections” to manifest themselves until such a time when young Will believes the Pledge has become worthy enough to come from his lips is both supremely arrogant and intellectually dishonest.

(But he sounds so smart, bless his heart!)

Second, little Will is an unadulterated narcissistic spoiled brat – not because of his views, which he is entitled to, but because of his wanton disrespect for authority. During the interview with CNN’s John Roberts, he was asked what he said to his teacher following the “grief” he received for refusing to stand for the Pledge.

Said the young Phillips:

I, eventually, very solemnly, with a little bit of malice in my voice, said, “Ma’am, with all due respect, you can go jump off a bridge.”

Roberts, of course, giggled while the young scamp recounted his amusing encounter with the teacher. The boy’s Dad, who was sitting beside Will, put his head in his hands in playful embarrassment.

That this boy was not suspended for telling a teacher to “jump off a bridge” is bad enough. That his father was apparently unconcerned with such a blatant display of contempt for authority is even more disturbing. That his mother said she was proud of him is downright disgusting.

Perhaps someone ought to provide young Will with some pictures and accounts from societies where real oppression exists. Maybe someone ought to enlighten the young scholar as to the realities of slavery, ethnic cleansing and the denial of basic human rights that exist in abundance elsewhere in the world. Someone should probably explain to the young lawyer-wanna-be (that’s what he said he wants to be) that the United States has liberated more people than all other nations in the history of this planet combined.

Someone also ought to instill a bit of humility in this boy. I don’t care how many multi-syllabic words he can rattle off for the cameras, he is a bit too full of himself and too impressed with his own intelligence.

Couple that with his willful disregard of authority, and you’ve got a punk.

As God is my witness, if one my daughters stood up in class after deciding she did not want to sit through a showing of Al Gore’s mythological meterological romp, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and in the process told her teacher to “jump off a bridge,” I can assure you that punishment would be swift and severe.

That kind of insolence and disregard for authority is intolerable regardless of which side of ideological fence it comes from.

I guess it’s kind of “cute” coming from a liberal, but imagine for a moment if Will Phillips was a young conservative. The mainstream media would have split an artery. He’d have been crucified if he chose not to stand for the Pledge because of something Barack Obama did or said. (Of course, conservatives don’t think that way, but you get my point). Think of how the media lambasted Carrie Prejean when she stood up for traditional marriage.

Third, the Pledge of Allegiance does not dictate how someone should think on any given subject. It is not a pledge to conservatism. It is not a pledge to liberalism. It is a pledge to the nation that affords one to think as they so choose, regardless of their politics. Someone ought to remind the boy that the flag he has decided to shun honors everyone who gave up their lives for this country so that he might live free.

That he chooses to forego proclaiming his allegiance to his own country until it adheres to his view of how it should be is the very definition of narcissism.

I don’t support Barack Obama or his initiatives toward socialism, but I still pledge my allegiance to this nation.

I don’t believe Little Will should be made to say the Pledge if he doesn’t wish to. I find it abhorrent that he wouldn’t, but one ought not force anyone to say it.

But he damn well should.

There are millions and millions of dead military men and women who have earned the right to be shown that respect.

You probably didn’t realize that Gore Vidal – an icon, I’m told – is a sharp provocateur, did you? You weren’t aware, I’m sure, that this 83-year old “too smart for the room” cultural relic is as delightfully irreverent as he is engagingly irascible. He is so complex, so enchanting, so cantankerous, so dazzling – a veritable bouillabaisse of pervasive cogitation – that to not elicit his opinion on any given subject is to embrace intellectual apathy. He apparently possesses a “trademark wit” and does “dead-on” imitations of John F. Kennedy and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Oh, goody.

Mr. Vidal – interviewed by John Meroney of Atlantic Magazine – believes that the United States doesn’t deserve a man like Barack Obama at the helm.

Meroney: Barack Obama’s books seemed to persuade many people to support him. Have you read them?

Vidal: No. Does one ever read a politician’s books?

Meroney: Well, Obama actually wrote them himself.

Vidal: I’m sure he did. He’s highly educated – and rather better than a country like this deserves. Put that in red letters.

Yes, according to Gore Vidal – one time chairman of the People’s Party in the early 1970s, and an advocate of impeaching former President George W. Bush for war crimes – Barack Obama is “rather better than a country like this deserves.”

“A country like this?”

(Vidal once famously said, “There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party…and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat … Essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.”)

And didn’t Bill Ayers, the terrorist, help co-write the Obama book Dreams From My Father?

Vidal goes on to refer to the 13-year old girl that Roman Polanski drugged and sodomized in 1978 as a “hooker.”

Meroney: In September, director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland for leaving the U.S. in 1978 before being sentenced to prison for raping a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson’s house in Hollywood. During the time of the original incident, you were working in the industry, and you and Polanski had a common friend in theater critic and producer Kenneth Tynan. So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?

Vidal: I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?

Meroney: I’ve certainly never heard that take on the story before.

Vidal: First, I was in the middle of all that. Back then, we all were. Everybody knew everybody else. There was a totally different story at the time that doesn’t resemble anything that we’re now being told.

Such class.

Such wit.

Trademark, I’m told.

But wait … it gets better. Not only was the raped child a “hooker” – which, presumably, sheds some much-needed light on the misunderstandings that characterize the entire Polanski affair – but the fact that Polanski is Jewish played a major role in what happened to him.

Yes, anti-semitism – not the raping of a minor – is what brought Polanski down.

Vidal: The media can’t get anything straight. Plus, there’s usually an anti-Semitic and anti-fag thing going on with the press – lots of crazy things. The idea that this girl was in her communion dress, a little angel all in white, being raped by this awful Jew, Polacko – that’s what people were calling him – well, the story is totally different now from what it was then.

Yes, the story was totally different thirty-one years ago. It has been manipulated by Jew-haters and conservatives alike over the course of time. Why couldn’t the rest of us see that?

Some of the original headlines – “Young Teen Seduces Director – Forced Him Into Sodomy” and “Polanski Hoodwinked By Teeny-Bopping Tart” – have since been lost to the annals of time. Thank goodness the great provocateur Gore Vidal could set it straight for everyone.

Meroney: You think anti-Semitism is motivating the prosecution of Polanski?

Vidal: Anti-Semitism got poor Polanski. He was also a foreigner. He did not subscribe to American values in the least. To [his persecutors], that seemed vicious and unnatural.

Meroney: What are “American values”?

Vidal: Lying and cheating. There’s nothing better.

If ever there was something that does not require any further analysis, it is Vidal’s definition of “American values.”

Readers of Roman Around know that I’ve no need to resort to the use of profanity here, and save for a few occasions in which I’ve opted to quote someone else, I have deliberately avoided it. I assure you, I am no prude, and I certainly don’t say this from a position of superiority or righteousness. I do not begrudge any of my colleagues in the blogosphere who do (including some I respect immensely). It’s simply a choice I’ve made for this blog.

Why?

Primarily because I find it beneficial to elevate language whenever possible. Yes, I am wont to have a little fun with words now and again, but as a rule, I find wanton profanity polluting and wholly unnecessary – particularly in a world where competing ideologies and value sets can get explosive.

I don’t even allow replies with profanity to be posted here. If there is a point to be made in response to something I’ve written, I trust it can be made without having to resort to vulgarity.

If it cannot, then I invite the reader to go elsewhere.

Indeed, a case can be made that there is a time and place for profane language – like in a movie, or when listening to Senator Chuck Schumer speak.

However, there are times – rare occasions – when the inclusion of profanity and epithets on this blog become a necessary evil to illustrate critical points.

(Uh oh, says the audience … What am I trying to say here?)

Here’s my point:

The common criticism – the underlying theme – in the tsunami of anti-Rush Limbaugh rhetoric that has flooded the mainstream media in recent days has been Limbaugh’s (supposed) insensitivity and divisiveness. His bid to be a minority owner of the St. Louis Rams football team actually offended and outraged many.

Limbaugh has no place in the National Football league, his enemies have said. He is simply is not good for professional football, his detractors have argued. He would not project the right image or uphold the league’s high standards, his opponents have claimed.

“And the game done chose me to bring pain to niggas and pussy holes, they one in the same.”- I’m Real, co-written by Jennifer Lopez, minority owner of the Miami Dolphins.

Sensationally crude, I know.

(My sincere apologies)

But in light of the brutal beating Limbaugh has taken in the media for things he never said or did, such eloquence and lyrical vivacity bear repeating in order to emphasize the point: “Niggas and pussy holes.”

Isn’t it delightful?

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you that grandiloquent wordsmith – and minority owner of the Miami Dolphins – Jennifer Lopez.

As “Stage Right” explains:

Jennifer Lopez, whose Sondheim-like lyric genius is on display at the top of this post, holds the same status with the Miami Dolphins as Limbaugh would have with the Rams. And, not only does she have co-writer credit on this offensive drivel, she also recorded and performed it live. She continues to earn money in royalties for her genius use of the “N-Word.” My guess is that those who took issue with Limbaugh’s imaginary racial slur are OK with J-Lo’s actual racial slur because she looks a lot better in tight pants.

Although Limbaugh has slimmed down considerably in recent months, I’ll concede the point and give the nod to Lopez in the “looks-better-from-behind” department. However, distinguishing between that which is excreted from that shapely backside of hers and the filth coming from her mouth is no easy task.

(My apologies once again).

Remember, liberal bigotry unifies.

Compare Lopez’s lyrics with these words that actually did come from Limbaugh’s mouth:

When we (conservatives) look out over the United States of America, when we are anywhere, when we see a group of people, such as this or anywhere, we see Americans. We see human beings. We don’t see groups. We don’t see victims. We don’t see people we want to exploit. What we see — what we see is potential. We do not look out across the country and see the average American, the person that makes this country work. We do not see that person with contempt. We don’t think that person doesn’t have what it takes. We believe that person can be the best he or she wants to be if certain things are just removed from their path like onerous taxes, regulations and too much government.

We want every American to be the best he or she chooses to be. We recognize that we are all individuals.

Appaling, right?

Divisive, yes?

How dare he say that he wants every American to be the best he or she chooses to be. How dare he see Americans as human beings. Perhaps if he saw them as “niggas” and “pussy holes,” he’d have been accepted by the standard bearers of professional football.

Meanwhile, another minority owner of the Dolphins has some controversial issues with public statements as well. Recently, Dolphins minority owner Serena Williams broke quite a few FCC laws by letting loose an “F-word” filled tirade on live television during the US Open. Then she menacingly threatened a side judge and was subsequently disqualified. This kind of behavior and speech seems to be right in line with the NFL’s standards since I missed the press conference from Commissioner Roger Goodell condemning it.

Ahh, yes.

Self control personified.

If only the coffers of Medicare and Medicaid could have been fortified with one dollar for each use of the F-word in Serena’s nationally televised snit; President Obama could have then focused on his pursuit of the Nobel Prize in Physiology instead of health care reform.

Finally, we get to Fergie, some-time member of the Black Eyed Peas and some-time solo artist. You betcha, she has also been approved as a minority owner of the Miami Dolphins.

…

Earlier this week, Goodell said of Limbaugh’s potential ownership, “Divisive comments are not what the NFL is all about.” Is he splitting hairs between “comments” and “lyrics?” Because these lyrics from a 2003 Black Eyed Peas song sounds pretty divisive to me:

Overseas, yeah, we try to stop terrorism
But we still got terrorists here livin’
In the USA, the big CIA …

A war is goin’ on but the reason’s undercover
The truth is kept secret, it’s swept under the rug

Nothing like accusing the CIA of terrorism and our government of lying to bring people together.

How about drinking so much that you wet your pants, mid-song, on stage, in front of a live audience?

Where, pray tell, is the contingent of outraged football players on this one? And who will summon the courage to comment on the divisivness of accepting a member of a musical group that accuses the CIA of terrorist activities as a minority owner?

Am I to assume the league would somehow be tarnished to have a man who doesn’t care a damn thing about skin color – and has said repeatedly that he wants everyone in the United States to succeed – as a minority owner, but somehow benefits from embracing a foul-mouthed, undisciplined, F-bomb dropping cry baby?

When can we expect a statement from Al Sharpton on the unacceptability of a non-black using the word “nigga?” (Beacuse it’s clearly okay for blacks to use that word).

Aren’t 70% of the NFL’s players offended by the diviseness of Jennifer Lopez’s use of a racial epithet?

Disgusting.

And other adjectives too.

________________________________________________________

Update – October 17, 2009, 10:08 AM

In a column published online last evening at the Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh wrote:

The sports media elicited comments from a handful of players, none of whom I can recall ever meeting. Among other things, at least one said he would never play for a team I was involved in given my racial views. My racial views? You mean, my belief in a colorblind society where every individual is treated as a precious human being without regard to his race? Where football players should earn as much as they can and keep as much as they can, regardless of race? Those controversial racial views?

As a public service to faithful readers of this blog, I am going to cautiously lead some of you to a place that is all at once frightening, disorienting and embarrassing. It is a place that many of you have heard about in one context or another, but one that can make even the most iron-constitutioned conservative shudder.

Be forewarned.

It isn’t pretty.

I take you deep within the chattering ranks of a leftist blog.

(Now would be the time to remove any children or frail seniors from the room).

At Think Progress, back before it was announced that Rush Limbaugh would be dropped from the group looking to purchase the St. Louis Rams football team, many of leftism’s deepest and most articulate thinkers weighed in on Limbaugh potentially becoming a part-owner in the NFL.

The best and brightest of post-racial America voiced their concerns and shared their intuitive analyses.

Not a single word has been altered, and not a single one of the screen-names has been changed to protect the pathetic.

If Rush is approved , he could change the name from Rams to the Nazis or KKK, have his own Brown Shirt Army and at half time have them drill march with swastika flags and have a KKK celebration with a burning cross at midfield. -Nellieh

When I heard that Boss Limbaugh expressed interest of buying the Rams, I had to wonder what bad pain killer did he take. Having Limbaugh buy any football team which have predominently African-American players is like having the KKK buy a football team. This would put a black eye on the NFL franchise if EL Rushbo brought the Rams. -SP Biloxi

After all, when Limbaugh told an African-American caller to “take the bone out of his nose”, he was just “commenting on race.” -Ralph the Wonder Llama

I’m sure plenty of owners have racist tendencies. The only difference is that Rush’s feelings are on the record. -Badmoodman

It would be a real hoot if after tub-o-lard shelled out all that dough and bought the team, the entire team walked out on his fat ass. -Bozo the Neo Clown

Rush couldn’t even pass the NFL’s drug abuse policy. -Kid Charlemagne

Rush just wants a bevy of team doctors to shop from. -Xisithrus

Limpballs has so thoroughly immersed himself in white-wing racism that it will be a monumental task for any team he would own to keep non-white players. Limpballs has catered to the stereotypical dumb white bozo who hates anyone non-white. -Evangenital

This is great news… After Limberger’s ego gets back into shape after finding out he can’t change the symbol on the St. Louis Cards helmets to a burning cross, and that they refused to wear white hoods under their helmets, he’ll go on a two-week rant about his being singled out for discrimination. What joke this lump is. -Winski

You folks are thinking the wrong way about Rush. He thought that, by buying the team, he was actually buying the players. He figured that this would be an end run around the 13th Amendment and that he could treat his black players like the slaves he wishes he could own. -fergus

He also fantasizes about hanging around the locker room ogling his big, strapping athletes and ordering them to do nasty things to him. -fergus

I’m not sure any additional commentary is needed here. It speaks for itself.

And keep in mind, this was but a sampling.

These are the same cerebral heaviweights who profess that if you are in favor in same-sex marriage, you must hate homosexuals. These are the same intellectual powerhouses who say that if you are opposed to affirmative action, you must hate minorities. Therefore, what other reason could there possibly be for Rush Limbaugh to want to be part-owner of a professional football team other than his desire to be able to say he effectively “owns” black men?

Reasonable, no?

Meanwhile, on his radio program yesterday – just one day after being booted from the potential buyers group – Limbaugh took a few moments to speak with Ken Hutcherson, a former NFL linebacker who is now best known as the pastor of the Antioch Bible Church in Kirkland, Washington.

Incidentally, “The Hutch,” as Rush calls him, is black.

(It shouldn’t matter, but to the American leftocracy, nothing matters more).

Here was the exchange between Hutcherson and Limbaugh. (That’s Uncle Tom and Adolf Hitler to you lefty bloggers):

Ken Hutcherson

Limbaugh:Hutch, Welcome to the program.

Hutcherson: Hey, my man. I am so mad. I am doing backflips up here in Seattle. What in the world is going on in the United States? I mean, the whole issue, Rush, whether you like it or not, is they have done you wrong. And this is intolerance. It’s prejudice. And if America don’t wake up, it’s going to happen to them. I am so mad, man, I can’t even – and I’m a man of the cloth, Rush. I’m not supposed to get this upset.

Why don’t they talk to some African-Americans who know you?

Limbaugh: Oh, that would destroy the narrative. That would destroy the template.

Hutcherson: Oh, forget that. You know, and talk to some African-Americans who know the poverty pimps, Sharpton and Jackson. They’re nothing but slave sliders and pushers to get their way. And they’re going to let them have a voice on all the stuff that they’ve done? Jesse Jackson was telling Bush to, “Stay out of the bushes.” He was the one in the bushes having illegitimate kids. How in the world can the NFL – and I’m going to tell you something else, brother, straight from me, who played football – those African-American brothers who talk about they wouldn’t play? That is the biggest lie on this side of the universe. Not only would their wives get on them and make them go – and their girlfriends, and their moms – they would beat them all the way to the 50 yard line and tell them, “You better get out there and get that game check.” And why don’t they talk to the hundreds of African-American players that would be excited about you owning a team?

Limbaugh: Well, they want to present the idea that there are none, and that’s what they’ve done.

I’ll have to check the archive of Rush’s famed “ditto cam” to see if he was still wearing his minstrel paint when talking to Hutcherson.

Although not hard core, I fancy myself a bit of collector – primarily New York Mets and Beatles memorabilia – but I concede to being out of my league on this one. Therefore, from the perspective of a wet-behind-the-ears, low-level, minor-league pack rat, I must ask … How exactly does one display singed hair?

I’m sure that among those bad-to-the-bone, big-time collectors who make it their business to scarf up everything from Hollywood ear wax secretions to the fruits of a good rock and roll nose picking, the quandry of how to prominently showcase the burnt hair of a dead pop singer poses no problem.

To me, however, it is a mystery.

Under glass?

In baggies?

As part of a multi-container body hair display case?

I don’t know.

Once I heard that Michael Jackson’s burnt hair was up for sale, I knew this would keep me awake nights.

From the folks who brought you such timeless classics as, “Race Doesn’t Matter” and “Let Us Judge By The Content Of One’s Character Rather Than The Color Of One’s Skin” comes the latest barrier-breaking, bigotry-busting, everyone-is-equal initiative – this time from the Tucson Arizona Unified School District. Taken directly out of the “Poor Baby, He’s Black And Cannot Read” file – which rests along side the “Poor Baby, He’s Spanish; No Wonder He’s In A Gang” file – is the latest and greatest guideline for student discipline to come along since the paddle.

In short, if one is either black (a racial designation) or Hispanic (a cultural designation), then his or her measure of discipline is likely going to be different from their Caucasian school mates. It is – to quote supporters – a restorative system.

The bottom line is … there will be one set of standards for blacks and Hispanics, and one for “everyone else.”

Arizona Republic columnist Doug MacEachern drew attention to a decision made by the Tucson Unified School District’s board over the summer to adopt a “Post-Unitary Status Plan,” which includes the goal of reducing suspensions and expulsions of minority students to reflect “no ethnic/racial disparities.”

“TUSD principals and disciplinarians (assuming such creatures still exist) are being asked to set two standards of behavior for their students,” MacEachern commented. “Some behavior will be met with strict penalties; some will not. It all depends on the color of the student’s skin.”

“School data that show disparities in suspension/expulsion rates will be examined in detail for root causes,” the new policy states. “Special attention will be dedicated to data regarding African-American and Hispanic students.”

The board also created an “Equity Team” to ensure “a commitment to social justice for all students.”

“The happy-face edu-speak notwithstanding, what the Tucson Unified School District board of governors has approved this summer is a race-based system of discipline,” MacEachern concluded. “Offenses by students will be judged, and penalties meted out, depending on the student’s hue.”

School officials, however, have both refuted MacEachern’s description of the policy as “two-tiered” and argued that the new guidelines will only help correct racial inequalities that already exist in the system.

An “Equity Team?”

Lord, help me.

If you are not shaking your head, check with your physician. Your hinge may be rusted.

What kind of socially destructive, race-obsessed, dangerous poppycock is this? Where on earth do these overpaid, hyper-sensitive, university-educated social relics with no real answers to real problems come up with these asinine ideas? How is it that people who are supposed to be serious adults, charged with the task of educating and molding our children into functioning members of a civil society, come up with such counterproductive, preposterous notions of how to deal with the so-called “inequities” that exist among students of different cultures and races? How in the world can anyone anywhere think this actually makes any kind of sense?

Above all, what message does this send to non-whites?

Try, “We’re not good enough to meet the standards of Caucasions, so it’s up to guilty whites with power to treat us extra special.”

Try, “I can get away with more because I do not meet – and can never exceed – the standards of people who are paler than I.”

The board’s report includes statistics that while American Indian students make up only 4 percent of the student body, they account for 20 percent of the suspensions across the district. And while black students only make up 7 percent of the student body, they account for 16.3 percent of out-of-school suspensions.
.

(TUSD Governing Board member Adelita) Grijalva also told the Star that administrators have had too much discretion over the years to give some kids a pass while throwing the book at others; and since the majority of teachers are white, they might not understand cultural differences.

“This will allow us to look at the situation with a bigger lens,” she said, “and I am 100 percent supportive of it.”

Think of the logic here …

If, for example, the majority of holdups in New York Cityare perpetrated by blacks, and if the definition of a holdup is changed to include only those heists that involve $200 or more, there will be – by definition – a sudden a drop in the number of black thieves. To leftists, the problem is thus solved. Everything is cool. The negative stigma has been removed. The heartless, compassionless, racially insensitive standard has been relaxed.

Keep in mind that the value set of the criminal that led to the thievery is never scrutinized. That would be judgemental.

Second, this gobbledygook about “cultural differences” is about as tiresome and idiotic as a Joe Biden lecture. What the hell does that really mean? Where exactly do these students come from? How is it that their cultural value sets are so different as to be so misunderstood by teachers who live in the same country as they? Are the vast majority of these students – whether they be black, Spanish, American-Indian, whatever – new to the United States? Or Western Civilization? Have they just been dropped off in America from Planet Zaytox without any sense of what is right and wrong?

Do liberals even bother to listen to the things they say?

Either theft is wrong or it is not. Either hitting another student when it is not in self-defense is wrong or it is not. Cheating is either acceptible or it is not.

Are these values unique only to White Americans? Is the effectiveness of punishment somehow synonymous with melanin levels in the skin? Or by one’s identification to his or her Spanish heritage?

“He did not help the cause of diversity and tolerance with his remarks,” said Congressman Hank Johnson about colleague Joe Wilson, “If I were a betting man, I would say that it instigated more racist sentiment.”

Tolernace is a peculiar word to use.

I would say something about the pot calling the kettle black, but I might get accused of being a Grand Wizard or something.

I don’t recall Mr. Johnson – or any of his fellow Dems – condemning anyone during the nearly eight-year cavalcade of vitriolic Bush bashing that took place prior to the Messianic Age. Where exactly was Mr. Johnson when swastikas were being substituted for the letter “s” in any number of anti-George W. Bush protest signs? Where were his thoughtful remarks after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called President Bush a liar? Where was the call for civility when former Vice President Al Gore bellowed like an angry old man returning socks at Wal Mart, screaming that Bush had betrayed this country.

I suppose Dems were just being tolerant.

If I were a betting man, I would guarantee that the overwhelming vast majority of Americans are at (or near) their breaking points, tired of this ongoing desperation game being played by panicked Democrats.

Johnson went on to say, “I guess we’ll probably have folks putting on white hoods and white uniforms again, riding through the countryside intimidating people.”

Contemptibility, thy name is Hank Johnson.

Come now, Congressman, do you actually believe that people will now start sporting white hoods and uniforms? Are you serious? Do you truly think that in this day and age Ku-Klux-Klan-like bands of angry racists are going to take to the “countryside” and terrorize people? Because of two words blurted out by one congressman?

Are liberals born this way, or is it a contracted condition?

I don’t expect the mainstream media, in its infinite uselessness, to question such ignorant and embarrassing comments made by a black congressman. The fact is, from Charles Rangel to Diane Watson, when black politicians cry racism, the rest of the world is expected to take it, accept it as truth, fold up like a cheap table, and go find other racist conservatives to yak about.

But aren’t Johnson’s claims of a possible return to burning crosses and lynching at least as provocative, or worthy of at least the same media attention, as the assertion by the President that illegals would not be covered by his health care reform plan? Is there no one in the mainstream media who thinks that Mr. Johnson needs to explain himself any further? Are there no follow up questions anywhere to be asked of this man? Are journalists simply exhausted from expending all their energy and resources into covering Joe Wilson and the aftermath of his ruthless “You lie!” attack on the President?

I would ask Mr. Johnson, and every other coward who has used racism to explain away opposition to the President’s agenda, if it is possible to disagree with Obama and not be a racist? If so, what would that opposition look like or sound like?

Serving California’s 33rd Congressional District is Los Angeles native, Congresswoman Diane Watson. Among her other laudable attributes is not only her titillating support of Fidel Castro and his country’s exemplary health care delivery system, but her capacity to deal cards from the race deck effortlessly.

At a town-hall meeting on Thursday, Watson declared that those who oppose ObamaCare do so because they wish to see the President destroyed. As sure as there are pungent armpits in a summertime New York subway tunnel, it is no surprise to learn that the President’s skin color is the real reason. Indeed, according to Watson, the desire to see Bracak Obama’s initiatives defeated – and thus, his presidency branded a failure – comes down to good old-fashioned, let’s-break-out-the-hoods-and-matchstick racism.

From the well of incisive thought and seasoned analysis that is Diane Watson, there are two comments she made during that meeting that I’d like to dissect.

First, said Watson:

“You might have heard their philosophical leader. I think his name is Rush Limbaugh. (She pronounced it Lim-BO).And he said early on, “I hope that he fails.” Do you know what that means? If the President – your Commander-In-Chief – fails, America fails.”

To begin with, the term “philosophical leader” is about as meaningless as the words that roll off an Obama teleprompter, or a New York Mets baseball game. However, seeing as I’m in a particularly festive mood this morning, I’ll roll with it.

Rush is certainly one of conservatism’s finest “spokesmen” (for the want of a preferable phrase), but he didn’t invent conservatism. To the great dismay of liberals, leftists and other children, he happens to articulate it exceedingly well – almost as well as the “drive-by” media misinterpret, misquote and misunderstand almost everything he says. And while there is definitely a profusion of weak-kneed, mushy-in-the-middle, pseudo-conservatives who attempt to redefine conservatism by abandoning its principles for more leftward ideals, Rush does no such thing.

His “philosophy” has remained steadfast since his Sacramento radio debut in 1984. That fact alone is enough to send the undergarments of liberals into vexatious knots.

Again, assuming the “philosophical leader” tag is applicable, the most entertaining part of Watson’s statement is when she says she “thinks” his name is Rush Limbaugh – as if trying to decide whether or not she’s heard of him.

There isn’t a single self-respecting, self-serving, big-government liberal taking in oxygen today who has not heard of Rush Limbaugh.

In short, if the Commander-In-Chief fails to apologize on foreign soil for his own country; and fails to expand the deficit to unsustainable record-breaking levels; and fails in his quest to nationalize the greatest health care delivery system in the world; and fails in his attempts to have the government take over automobile companies and financial institutions; and fails to weaken the defenses of the country he is charged to protect by keeping agencies like the CIA from doing their job; and fails to recognize the ongoing battle against murderous Islamo-fascists as a genuine war; and fails to understand that enemy combatants captured on the field of battle are not to be afforded the same rights as American citizens; and fails in adopting industry-killing, job-killing “global warming” legislation … then America wins.

It’s pretty simple, really.

Watson continues:

“Now when a Senator says that this will be his Waterloo – and we all know what happened at Waterloo – then we have him, and he fails. Do we want a failed state called the ‘United States?’ So remember, they are spreading fear, and they’re trying to see that the first President who looks like me fails.”

Regarding fear … it was not a conservative who scared America into believing that the nation would be ravaged by heterosexual AIDS in the 1980s. It was not a conservative who promised that food supplies would run out by the year 2000. It was not a conservative who warned that natural resources would be depleted by 1990 due to human over consumption. It was not a conservative who foresaw a world in peril due to global cooling. It was not a conservative who promised a planet devastated by overpopulation by 1996. It was not a conservative who said the bird flu would wipe out countless numbers of humans. It was not a conservative who promulgated the impending Y2K disaster and set up numerous agencies, websites, roundtables, taskforces and contingency plans to save the world from it. It was not a conservative who predicted widespread catastrophe due to mad cow disease.

And as far as the “first President who looks like me” remark … is there any group of people more intolerant, more race-consumed, more fixated on the skin color of people than leftists? Time after time, these sorry excuses for thinkers hurl their character-assassinating bombs into the public square, accusing conservatives of harboring animosity toward President Obama due to his race, never once realizing that everything they project is a direct reflection of how they think. To leftists, everything that carries even the slightest negative connotation regarding Barack Obama can only be about his color. It must be about his color. It simply isn’t possible for anyone to legitimately disagree with President Obama policy-wise and not be bad; it has to be because they hate blacks or resent the fact that America would put a black man in the White House.

Frankly, people like Watson need to get their antiquated behinds out of the 1960s and enter the real world. If Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream of a nation where character previals over color is at all being asphyxiated, it is happening because of the likes of Watson and her race-obsessed ilk.

To people like me, President Obama needs to fail because of his desire (and promise) to transform America into something the country has never been – a nation where the State is more important than the individual.

Obama’s failures assure that such a transformation cannot – and will not – take place.

Watson also threw in these gushing words about Cuba’s world-class health care:

Let me tell you, before you say, ‘Oh, it’s communist,’ you need to go down there and see what Fidel Castro put in place. And I want you to know, you can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met. And you know, the Cuban Revolution that kicked out the wealthy – Che Guevara did that – and after they took over, they went out among the population to find someone who could lead this new nation and they found … well, just leave it there … an attorney by the name of Fidel Castro.

Perhaps Ms. Watson could use a paper towel or a sedative … or a cigarette.

As Jay Ambrose wrote in October, 2007, outside of Guevara’s reckless extermination of “people proven guilty of absolutely nothing,” his desire to use Soviet missiles against America, and the fact that he “ran a Havana prison in which he killed, killed and then killed some more, and later helped start the labor camp system in which homosexuals and others considered undesirable were to be confined as nothing more than slaves,” what’s not to love?

Does anyone love a war criminal more than a leftist? Or a t-shirt manufacturer?

And as for Cuba’s health care system … until Congresswoman Watson ditches her inferior Capitol Hill health plan for CastroCare, the discussion is closed.

So, let me see if I understand this correctly – and please feel free to jump in at any time with any necessary corrections.

In a state so egregiously liberal as New York – ranked as the “least free” state “by a wide margain” in a recent study released by the Mercatus Center of George Mason University – where equality supercedes liberty, high taxes are driving out business by the boatload, and government intervention is the happy norm, Governor David Paterson believes a racist media means him no good.

In blue New York, where avid multiculturalists, same sex marriage advocates, abortion proponents, and Al Sharpton all feel right at home, David Paterson thinks a bigoted press wants to drive him from office because he’s black.

In a state so blue that centrists are seen as potential fascists; where campaigns for “gender neutral” bathrooms are par for the course; where individual income, corporate and sales taxes are disgustingly high and spending on social services is well above the national average; where certain cooking oils are banned from use in privately owned restaurants; where the mayor decided that the will of the people was irrlevant and put the kaibosh on term limits; and where one of the most diverse population centers of the world – including a large, vibrant, influential and culturally expansive black community – exists, the Governor is yanking out the good old race card and slamming it on the table.

Gov. Paterson blamed a racist media Friday for trying to push him out of next year’s election – launching into an angry rant that left even some black Democrats shaking their heads. “The whole idea is to get me not to run in the primary,” Paterson complained on a morning radio show hosted by Daily News columnist Errol Louis.

He suggested that Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, the country’s only other African-American governor, also is under fire because of his race.

“We’re not in the post-racial period,” Paterson said. “The reality is the next victim on the list – and you can see it coming – is President Barack Obama, who did nothing more than trying to reform a health care system.”

Paterson said the campaign against him is being “orchestrated” by reporters who would rather make the news than report it. But critics said the governor should blame his own blunders.

“He’s given the media more than enough to feed on with the incompetence shown in his administration,” said state Sen. Kevin Parker (D-Brooklyn), an African-American.

“To quote Michael Jackson, he should start with the man in the mirror,” Parker said. Even state Sen. Bill Perkins (D-Harlem), a black supporter of the governor, urged him to be more like Obama by staying “focused on the message.”

Paterson has been the target of Democrats who fear his low approval ratings – 18% at their lowest and about 30% now – will endanger the party next year if he decides to run for his first full term as governor.

Paterson’s incompetence as New York’s head honcho couldn’t possibly be the reason for any negativity coming his way. Rather, it must be the inherent “white hooded” mentality that secretly permeates the media in the Empire State – and elsewhere. The main stream media simply cannot stand blacks. They’ll do anything necessary to help facilitate their removal from public office. After all, it’s common knowledge that New York’s media complex is ferociously right-wing.

His inability to deal effectively with a complete break-down in the state economy, numerous state level scandals among the Democrat leadership and the leadership debacle in the state Senate have certainly not helped this lightweight.

Recall during the Presidential campaign that Paterson said the repeated use of the term “community organizer” by Republicans in describing Barack Obama’s experience was really code for “black.” Recall that it was during a speech at the NAACP convention in Cincinnati where Paterson implied that an Obama loss in the presidential election would be a win for racism. He also said that being called an “accidental governor” following Eliot Spitzer’s resignation was motivated by racial bias.

The Governor of New York has got to learn to shut his whiny mouth, act like a man, and come to the realization that he is simply ill-equipped to handle the position. His well publicized failures and almost non-existant support reflect his lack of skills as an executive, not the level of melanin in his skin.

There is a disturbing, almost frightening penchant toward feminization in today’s America. Doing what’s right in favor of that which feels good, or that which is geared specifically not to offend, has become the exception, not the rule. The feminist movement did much to demonize masculinity in our culture, and because masculinity is not cultivated in our institutions of learning, and is generally looked down upon by those who control academia, authority itself has taken a hit.

True authority – the kind that summons respect, reverence and even a touch of fear – is being pushed aside, condemned as antiquated patriarchal nonsense, in favor of more “progressive” methods of trying to maintain order. Thus, authority itself is emasculated, common sense is effectively castrated, and unintended consequences create new difficulties where there should be none.

This emasculated authority has several ugly heads, one of which is the “easy way out” approach to maintaining order.

As an example, think about a typical school yard fight between two boys.

Punches are thrown, bodies are rolling about in the dirt.

A crowd gathers around, and the audience starts cheering them on as they pound each other.

Eventually, the Dean (or some school official) rushes over to break it up.

As they’re being separated, both boys are still throwing punches, arms flailing in the air, hoping to land one last blow. The Dean says something like, “Okay, knock it off!” or he asks “What is going on here?” Predictably, one of the boys (if not both) will start pointing fingers at the other, screaming, “He started it! He started it!”

More times than not, the Dean will respond with the game-breaking, ever-diplomatic, “I don’t care who started it!”

Both boys will then get punished for “fighting.”

It’s precisely that kind of “easy way out” response that curdles my blood.

When I was in school, I remember hearing teachers and principals say they didn’t care who started the fights; they weren’t interested in justice. They only wanted peace.

It always infuruated me.

Why didn’t the Dean care who started it?

Shouldn’t he have cared?

Shouldn’t the Dean at least have tried to do the right thing and not unjustly punish someone who may have been defending himself?

These kinds of things have always driven me crazy – and they still do.

With authority emasculated, everyone is treated equally. The line which separates right from wrong is blurred. Feelings are spared. No one is allowed to feel worse than the other. Defining values is not a priority.

The “easy way out” approach – one of the by-products of this growing trend – manifests itself in many different ways.

In New York City, for example, students are not permitted to carry their cell phones into school with them (except in very specific circumstances). Apparently, the beeping, chirping and ringing was enough of a distraction to prompt a flat-out city-wide ban – even though the vast majority of students do not use them while in school.

Most kids, in fact, use their cell phones to stay in contact with parents after school. Seeing as city-street pay phones are quickly going the way of the eight-track tape, cell phones have proven – at least in this context – a positive thing. Yet, instead of each school being allowed to formulate its own rules regarding inappropriate cell phone usage during classroom hours, the city opted for an easy, dismissive, all-encompassing, band-aid-type fix of a much bigger wound, namely the ever-weakening hand of authority.

When void of reasoned thought, ban, ban, ban.

Please don’t misunderstand. This is not an endorsement of children having cell phones. Personally, seeing ten year olds with their heads down, staring into their cell phone screens, thumbs-a-tapping at breakneck speed, carrying devices so sophisticated that they can browse the internet while spell checking their book reports, is not my ideal. I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I’ve wanted to yank one from the clutches of some self-absorbed kid (almost redundant) sitting on a city bus, screaming into it at the top of his lungs, showing the rest of us how well he can use profanity, and shove it (along with an explosive device) into an orifice to be named later.

I must ask … why not just confiscate the phones of disruptive students the way teachers used to take away sling shots, secretly scrawled notes or, when I was kid, those hand-held electronic football games? Blaming the technology instead of the student sends the wrong message. Instead of just prohibiting cell phone use during school hours and, say, making it compulsory for phones to be turned off upon entering the building – and then having the backbone to actually enforce it – a cowardly ban was made law.

Perhaps more importantly, banning the phone doesn’t teach or enforce the value of having to exercise discipline. Despite the popular notion from leftists everywhere, technology is not the problem. As citizens of the greatest, freest and most advanced country the world has ever known, we should want to improve our standard of living, shouldn’t we? Why are cell phones somehow beyond the sphere of influence when it comes to teaching our kids restraint, responsibility and self-control?

I make this point, not as an advocate of the cellular phone industry, but as an authentic lament for the changing and misguided role of responsibility and accountability in our society.

People simply throw their hands in the air too easily.

To make a somewhat peculiar comparison, it is precisely this thinking that is behind those that blame guns for crime instead of those who use them recklessly or illegally. Indeed, the argument of everything having a time and place is well-taken. However, law abiding citizens who possess firearms are absolutely no threat to society. Only criminals are. Banning guns doesn’t keep bad people from acquiring or using them. By the same token, students who abide by the rules (and have the value system to know what’s appropriate and what is not) by keeping their cell phones turned off during school hours are no threat to disrupt the classroom – not with the phone anyway. Conversely, kids who have no regard or respect for the school and its authority will still manage to sneak them in and disrupt things.

It is about values, not technology.

I recall last year, in Cedar Lake, Indiana, a move was made by school administrators to foster a culture of safety – namely, the banning of all carry bags in school, including purses. Apparently, the ludicrous rule had been on the books for three years but only began being enforced last year.

The reason?

To make it more difficult for students to carry weapons and drugs into school.

No, really.

Book bags, purses and other potentially lethal carriers are to remain in lockers during school hours. One student commented, “People even got yelled at for carrying fanny packs and too big of a pencil holder, which is ridiculous.”

Why not a similar push to ban pockets?

Perhaps an all-sandal policy should be implemented to keep students from sneaking things into school via their sneakers?

At one time, clearly defined boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable were the norm. If rules were violated, the offender was punished. Behaviors that once had stigmas attached to them became more accepted. What were once good old fashioned expulsions from school became in-house suspensions. Fostering discipline and maintaining order were replaced with getting in touch with one’s feelings and having the “right” to express them. The line of thought that endorses the handing out of awards and medals to kids for simply “participating” in a given activity (so as to cheapen the kid who genuinely earns the award) is prevalent almost everywhere. The burden of actually having the courage to instill and reinforce good values in students is apparently too much for some educators these days, lest they offend anyone. Citizenship classes have been replaced with “save the earth” curriculums, safe-sex programs, and free condoms on demand.

How delightful.

It is the feminization of society.

Denene Reppa, mother of one of the Cedar Lake, Indiana students who was forced run to his locker in between each class to get the needed book instead of being able to carry several in a book bag, saw the bright side, saying, “Those types of organizational skills will transfer when she goes to college. Very important … She can keep her other things in there as well that kind of relate to her being a female.”

That’s definitely one way of looking at it.

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John Hughes, writer and director of such classic 1980s teen-life films as “The Breakfast Club” and “Sixteen Candles”, as well as being the man behind “National Lampoon’s Vacation” and “Home Alone,” died in New York yesterday at the age of 59.

Film critic Roger Ebert once called Hughes “the philosopher of adolescence.”

There’s no way to improve upon that.

I am not one normally taken to crafting tributes or summarizing the lives of those I respect or admire – that’s better left to people who will due the deceased justice – but I do admit to being sad about his passing, perhaps more so than I expected; not only because he was so young, but because his work admittedly made a lasting impression on me.

Films he either penned or directed, such as the iconic “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and the hilariously underrated “Planes, Trains And Automobiles,” have always been among my favorites. His films were marvelously uncomplicated, well constructed, always entertaining and never condescending.

And, of course – most importantly – his films made me laugh.

And although Hughes hadn’t directed a film for almost twenty years, I always had the feeling – and the hope – that he might return to the director’s chair one day.

Hillel Italie of the Associated Press writes:

Hughes’ ensemble comedies helped make stars out of Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy and many other young performers. He also scripted the phenomenally popular “Home Alone,” which made little-known Macaulay Culkin a sensation as the 8-year-old accidentally abandoned by his vacationing family, and wrote or directed such hits as “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” “Pretty in Pink,” “Planes, Trains And Automobiles” and “Uncle Buck.”

“I was a fan of both his work and a fan of him as a person,” Culkin said. “The world has lost not only a quintessential filmmaker whose influence will be felt for generations, but a great and decent man.”

Other actors who got early breaks from Hughes included John Cusack (“Sixteen Candles”), Judd Nelson (“The Breakfast Club”), Steve Carell (“Curly Sue”) and Lili Taylor (“She’s Having a Baby”).

Actor and director Bill Paxton credited Hughes for launching his career by casting him as bullying older brother Chet in the 1985 film “Weird Science.”

“He took a tremendous chance on me,” Paxton said. “Like Orson Welles, he was a boy wonder, a director’s director, a writer’s writer, a filmmaker’s filmmaker. He was one of the giants.”

Back in the day, when I had fewer rings around my trunk, and I was sure I was either going to be a professional (world renowned) musician or a highly-respected film maker, John Hughes was one of the people in the artistic community I admired most. His way of capturing a moment without ever needing to overstate or exaggerate it – to be able to summon the emotions of the viewer so that the happenings on the screen were as accesible as they were believable – impressed me tremendously.

I, too, wanted to do that.

So did many others.

I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to John Hughes and thank him for some wonderful memories of adolescence (few as they might have been).

Admittedly, he doesn’t know all the facts, but he is familiar enough with the case to place blame with the authorities.

How could it possibly be anything else?

The police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he said, acted “stupidly” in last week’s arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. – who happens to be black. (Such a wordsmith, that Bam). In fact, according to the Chief Executive of the United States, blacks and Hispanics are still singled out unfairly for arrest in this nation. (I’m glad he cleared that up).

There’s nothing quite like having the most powerful man in the world throw police officers under the bus for doing their jobs.

Hopefully, the President was afforded the opportunity to dry his soaking wet feet (from all that water walking) before he inserted them squarely into his mouth last evening.

No one likes to speak with an excessively wet tongue.

Yes, there is much one can draw from the vast well of emotion and knee-jerkism that impels modern liberal thought – confusion, non sequitors, rhythmic bumper sticker slogans, suggestions on how to live a “green” life, how to punish the rich, and so on.

And among those things least likely to be found in almost any leftist contention is good old fashioned down-to-earth reasonability.

In the matter of Mr. Gates’ arrest – and in reading some of the articles on the subject over the past few days from left-leaning sources – one would have to come to the conclusion that if two unfamiliar people wearing backpacks are seen breaking into a home, that it is perfectly all right to assume they are doing something wrong – that is, unless they’re black. In those instances, reasonably suspicious behavior – like trying to force entry into a house – should be approached differently. The history and sensitivities of an entire race of people should play a determinative role on how such a situation is handled.

That’s because liberals see everything branded with the very labels they claim they want to see removed.

Perhaps even more outrageous to today’s liberal is the idea that police actually respond to – and deal with – situations without racial bias. To lefties, prejudices against nonwhites are simply hard-wired into many cops. Sure, those who call the cops may or may not be acting on personal biases, but police officers who respond to those calls are almost always predisposed to racial bias.

Or so it would seem.

Forget the fact that in this day and age – the era of wretched political correctness and hyper-victimization – where Americans are regularly reminded of the racial sensitivities of minorities (thanks to such wonderful initiatives as Sensitivity Training courses and the constant bombardment of multiculturalism at school), it is now intrinsic in law enforcement officials to carefully weigh almost every action and word for fear of being labeled racist. Set aside the reality that this country is the least racist and most accommodating on Earth, and that the men and women of law enforcement overwhelmingly bend over backwards to avoid situations where racism could even be considered a factor in any action.

It’s insignificant to crusading leftists clinging to relevance. There are battles to be fought – even battles that have been won already.

In an age where useless yet somehow influential human debris like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson continue to be given importance, big corporations (in fear of being strong-armed by the blackmailing likes of Jackson), law enforcement agencies, small businesses, and media types continue to run scared at the prospect of these race-baiters causing them any trouble.

Gates being arrested. Note the black police officer in the foreground.

So what precipitated this latest tedious excursion into liberal regressiveness?

What is this Gates thing all about?

Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts on July 16th for disorderly conduct – charges that were dropped a couple of days ago – after he broke into the house he had been renting from Harvard University. Mr. Gates is considered a prominent black scholar – not to be confused with simply being a prominent American scholar – and has been on the faculty at Harvard since 1991. He is, unquestionably, an accomplished man. Upon returning home from a trip to China, where he was working on a documentary, he found that the front door of his home was jammed. He called upon his driver to help him try to force it open. It was at that point that a neighbor woman, who obviously did not recognize the two men, called the police to report what the overwhelming vast majority of people would consider reasonably suspicious activity – two men apparently trying to bust into the home.

It isn’t exactly a routine event.

Gates eventually got into the home through a back door.

When police arrived, Gates was asked to show his identification and proof that he lived there – a completely reasonable action.

It was at that point that Gates did what any consummate, learned scholar would do under the unusual circumstances – he refused. He then accused the police – specifically Officer James Crowley – of being racist.

Police said Gates was arrested after he yelled at an officer, accused him of racial bias and refused to calm down after the officer demanded that Gates show him identification to prove he lived in the home.

Gates’ lawyer, fellow Harvard scholar Charles Ogletree, said his client showed his driver’s license and Harvard ID — both with his photos — and repeatedly asked for the name and badge number of the officer, who refused. He followed the officer onto the front porch as he left his house and was arrested there.

Gates told The Root that the police handcuffed him behind his back but moved the cuffs to the front when he told them he walked with a cane. He noted that at least one of the officers in the group outside his house was black.

He spoke of a “terrifying and humiliating” experience at the Cambridge jail, where he was booked, fingerprinted, photographed and questioned, then locked up in a tiny cell that made him claustrophobic.

He said that he doesn’t know the woman who called police, Lucia Whalen, and that “she was probably doing the right thing.” Whalen didn’t respond to Associated Press requests for comment.

Gates said he harbors more anger toward the officer who arrested “the first black man” he saw and arrested him on a “trumped-up charge.”

So, let’s see if this all makes perfect sense up to this point …

A concerned neighbor saw two men, unknown to her, trying to break into a home. Assuming she would have reacted the same way had the two men been aqua, she called the police to investigate. They arrived to find the man – whom they had not yet identified – inside the home. The police asked the man for identification – standard operating procedure. The man, instead of handling the situation with the dignity and decorum one might expect from someone of his experience and education, chose not to take the minute or so it would have cost him to peacefully clear everything up, and decided to play his victim card, almost reflexively demanding the badge number and name of the police officer doing his job.

And just like that – because Mr. Gates decided it was – it became a racial matter.

It all sounds perfectly reasonable, doesn’t it?

(It is unclear whether the police officer would have dared to levy such an outrageous request for identification had Mr. Gates been white … or cyan … or simply not quite as black).

And, of course, keep in mind that Mr. Gates was not being arrested for breaking into his own home. He was being arrested for disorderly conduct. Apparently, after Mr. Gates finally took a nanosecond in between his exhibitions of “loud and tumultuous” behavior to produce his Harvard identification – and as the police were actually leaving his home satisfied that all had been explained – Gates followed the exiting cops out onto his porch, continuing his tirade about racism and racial profiling and other related blah-blah-blahs.

That’s when Gates was arrested.

And, sadly, that may be exactly what he wanted.

“I’m outraged,” Gates said in extensive comments made to TheRoot.com, a Web site he oversees. “I can’t believe that an individual policeman on the Cambridge police force would treat any African-American male this way, and I am astonished that this happened to me; and more importantly I’m astonished that it could happen to any citizen of the United States, no matter what their race.

“There are 1 million black men in the prison system, and on Thursday I became one of them,” he said. “I would sooner have believed the sky was going to fall from the heavens than I would have believed this could happen to me. It shouldn’t have happened to me, and it shouldn’t happen to anyone.”

On his radio program on Wednesday, talk show host Dennis Prager suggested that Mr. Gates’ outrage may have been rooted in the fact that the police did not recognize him or know who he was when they asked for his identification.

The police say Gates asked if the officer knew “who he was.” That may sound arrogant, but many a black man in the same position has asked a similar question. It means: “Can you see who I am, not just what I am?” Because regardless of their achievements, wealth or status, they are vulnerable to the universal black male experience — finding themselves in handcuffs first and charges dropped later. Was Gates fed up and frustrated? Loud and assertive? Even disorderly, as police maintain? Possibly so. It’s tough being a perpetual suspect.

…

In his 1994 book, “Colored People: A Memoir,” Gates wrote that although being black is no disgrace, it can be inconvenient: “When I walk into a room, people still see my blackness, more than my Gates-ness, or my literary-ness.” Even when the room is in his own home.

After reading that last paragraph, Prager correctly commented that in this instance “they came there to protect his house.”

Precisely.

I’m not certain how many academics are readily recognizable to the public at large, but it is not an unreasonable thing that the Cambridge police – or, for that matter, almost anyone outside of the intellectual circles Mr. Gates travels in – would not know who he was on sight. Safe to say, he would have been just as unrecognized and received the same treatment had he behaved just as boorishly and uncooperatively, regardless of the melanin levels in his skin.

Still, it is clear that Gates was set off by far more than just not being recognized. Within moments of being confronted by Officer Crowley, Gates yanked the oft-summoned race card from the top of his deck and threw it in the officer’s face.

And even if, after reading the police report, one is still inclined to criticize – or even condemn – the police for questionable or inappropriate behavior in this case, why is it automatically assumed that any problems or misunderstandings that may have occurred are, by default, attributable to Mr. Gates’ skin color?

No, you need not check your calendars. Believe it or not, this is not 1959.

I draw from former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani when I say that the police officers of this country have earned the right to be given the benefit of the doubt.

It’s a shame that the President of the United States did not see it that way at last evening’s press conference. Rather, he chose to offer a spontaneous, compulsory condemnation of the Cambridge Police Department in front of a national audience without the benefit of knowing – or even being familiar with – the facts.

Isn’t it possible – at all possible – that Professor Gates might have been in the wrong?

Perhaps a better question is: Is there anyone who can still doubt Obama’s unworldly ability to unify the American people?

Well done, Mr. President.

Respectfully, maybe you should keep your damned teleprompter shut off until you know what the hell you’re talking about.

As I prepare for what promises to be a tremendously trying day work-wise – slowly sipping my iced coffee, wondering if a few left-over grilled hot dogs is really the smart choice for breakfast – a couple of quick thoughts come to mind.

If there are two words I do not want to hear used in the same sentence for an indefinite period of time, effective immediately, they are “Jackson” and “Michael” – in any order.

I have no degree in journalism and I am not employed by any major news outlet, but I’d like to offer this tantalizing little news nugget (and please feel free to use it at your own discretion) – Michael Jackson is still dead. Chances are excellent that his status will remain unchanged for the foreseeable future. Reports of his death have not been exaggerated, and readers of this blog can expect no further updates on his condition unless something remarkable happens.

I sincerely pray for his soul and wish for his loved ones to find comfort in what is obviously a most difficult time, but once again, this just in … Michael Jackson remains dead.

(Although I hear that the CNN Special Report – “Michael Jackson – The Beverages He Loved and the Soap He Used” was pretty good).

Second, why is it that Reverend Al Sharpton matters? How on earth does such a race-baiting, irrelevant, lying sack of arrant swill – the self-proclaimed arbiter of all that is just and equitable – still get any sort of face time on any news channel? How is it that what he thinks about anything is newsworthy?

I am a steadfast supporter and defender of the First Amendment, so I don’t wish him to be silenced in any way.

My only wish (this morning) is that Mr. Sharpton could hear himself the way most everyone else hears him.

That’s quite a wish, I know.

That, and world peace.

I don’t ask for much.

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Yesterday, in Manhattan, hundreds of thousands of people jammed Fifth Avenue from Midtown to Greenwich Village to celebrate and commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the birth of the modern gay rights movement – the Stonewall riots of September, 1969.

There were floats, bands, politicians, drag queens, rainbow colored flags, green signs that read “Equal Rights” and the words “Gay Pride” plastered just about everywhere. People were clad in everything from “normal” everyday summertime attire to more “inventive” outfits – some of which looked like the result of a Crayola truck that might have went one round too many with an atomic bomb. There were cries of equality for all, demands that same-sex marriage be legalized and that oppression and close-mindedness be eradicated. It was an important day for much of the “gay community,” and by all accounts, an enormously successul and exciting afternoon.

All the right faces were there – from New York Governor David Paterson to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (openly gay). All the necessary photo ops were made, and all the right sound bites were distributed to the right news outlets.

I can already see the eyebrows crunching and the lips curling from some of you out there. Some of you are reflexively tightening your hands into fists of rage in anticipation of some sort of “gay hit piece” on my part. Ever since my series of articles called “I Don’t Hate Gays, Okay?“ from December of last year, I have officially been given card-carrying access to the Homophobe Club.

Please allow me to be clear … I don’t disparage anyone who was there for participating in the festivities, voicing their opinions, and standing up for what they believe in.

God bless them all – and I sincerely mean that.

I am, however, fascinated by the motivations of those who marched in yesterday’s parade – the same way I am enticed with some of the more vocal proponents of same-sex marriage. As I have written about many times in the past, I am strongly opposed to redefining the definition of marriage, but I certainly don’t hate gays (believe it or not). I want the same successes, good fortune, happiness and liberties extended to homosexuals that are afforded to heterosexuals. We are all Americans. We are all God’s children.

Most interesting to me were the calls for “equal rights” from the marchers and sign wavers. Equally intriguing was the theme of “gay pride” so much in abundance in yesterday’s celebrations.

First of all, if there are rights that are being denied to homosexuals in this country – specifically enumerated rights – I’d be very interested in knowing what they are. Despite the whiny jabber of those who instinctively cry “opression” at the drop of a hat, I know of no civil liberties or constitutional rights being denied to homoesexuals in the United States of America.

Of course, the reflexive response is that gays are being denied the “right” to marry.

But the premise is fallacious.

Where exactly is this “right” to be married expressed? What document or decree secures such a right? Marriage – like it or not – is not a right extended to individuals by a government. Rather, it is a union of one man and one woman recognized and endorsed by government. It is so because society’s very existence hinges on men and women procreating.

It’s really no more difficult than that.

Otherwise, the state is uninterested in relationships, shack-ups, one-night stands, hook-ups and all other non-traditional unions – as it should be. Marriage is a privilege defined by very specific guidelines. Marriage laws have been shaped and defined over time through the course of many centuries. Thus, marriage can be thought of as being a restriction of rights – especially when it comes to income and property.

It simply isn’t an “equal rights” issue.

Second, there’s the matter of pride.

Here were hundreds of thousands of human beings – legally exercising their rights to free speech and assembly – who were publicly taking pride not in their accomplishments or deeds (nor even in heritage or ancestry) but rather, with whom they choose to have sex. It was effectively an enormous congratulatory confluence of people proclaiming their dignity and worth based on their choice of sex partner(s), demanding that what they do in the privacy of their own bedrooms be accepted by the public at large.

I find this to be a tremendously sad reality.

When pride is based on anything other than achievment and the worth of someone’s deeds, and is instead built on skin color and with whom one sleeps, it is very often shallow.

Homosexuality is not illegal, nor is anyone advocating that it should be. I don’t know of anyone on my side of the aisle who really cares what consenting adults are doing in their bedrooms.

However, that doesn’t mean that I – or anyone else – need to approve of or accept anything being advocated by anyone who decides to share the intimate details of his or her life with the world.

Isn’t it interesting that the same folks who say that what goes on between consenting adults behind closed bedroom doors is no one else’s business but their own – which I agree with wholeheartedly – expect the rest of the world to place their stamp of approval on the same behavior?

Thus, it isn’t just the so-called “equal right” to same-sex marriage that many gays believe exists, it is the “equal right” to have – nay, demand – someone else’s approval.

Isn’t this actually the converse of “equal rights?”

As I once asked, which color of the rainbow in that “gay pride” flag represents the percentage of Americans who believe in traditional values?

Telling club, restaurant and bar owners that they could no longer allow smoking in their own establishments was only the beginning.

Indeed, the war on salt is already underway.

As the relentless march toward transforming matters of health into issues of morality continues – and the death toll of children and teenagers who have died due to smoking and second-hand smoke continues to be zero – the City of New York is now contemplating the possibility of further augmenting its interference in the free market system. Now, the Big Hands of the Big Apple are ready to tighten their grip around the throats of free enterprise just a little more by considering a new measure of soft tyranny (all meant for our own good, of course) – namely targeting 12,000 cigarette retailers in the city by requiring them to post anti-smoking signs on their own property.

The New York City health department is moving forward with a plan that would require about 12,000 cigarette retailers to post large anti-smoking signs.

It’s billed as the first such regulation in the United States.

The eye-level signs would have information about the harmful effects of smoking, possibly with an image.

The assistant commissioner for tobacco control, Sarah B. Perl, says it can be effective to display gruesome health effects such as amputations and throat cancer.

The Assistant Commissioner for Tobacco Control?

Oh, Lord.

Is there a Deputy to the Assistant for Tobacco Control too?

I would be willing to wager that Sarah B. Perl probably isn’t too keen about the idea of posting eye-level “before” and “after” pictures of aborted fetuses at abortion clinics – something that would almost certainly be “effective” in significantly cutting back the number of abortions in this country, as many liberals claim they’d like to see. It seems almost contradictory, seeing as so many liberals label the right to carry out an abortion as a “health care” issue.

Odd.

Can New Yorkers soon expect to see pictures of mangled bodies twisted beyond recognition in horrific alcohol-induced car wrecks, or images of spouses and children horribly abused by alcoholic family members, at “eye-level” positions in liquor stores across the city?

Are pictures of diseased arteries, obese people woofing down french fries, overweight cadavers and cellulite-laden “cottage cheese” legs going to find their way to “eye-level” locations outside of Burger King and McDonalds’ restaurants in the five boroughs?

How about snapshots of people with syphilis, gonorrhea and herpes in front of free condom distribution centers in schools and free clinics?

It’s a good thing liberals never impose their values on people.

Don’t misunderstand me … I don’t condone cigarette smoking.

I am not on the payroll of any tobacco company, nor do I get free samplers from the cigarette manufacturers.

I do, however, condone liberty – the freedom to make choices. Having the government inform people about the hazards of a perfectly legal activity is one thing. Stripping liberties from its citizenry is another.

It’s what liberals do.

Indeed, liberals are funny creatures … but when in power, they can be frightening creatures.

The unwillingness to accept and acknowledge human nature is a liberal shortcoming – from the inability to avow the categorically inherent differences that exist between the sexes to being able to label evil. One of the more disparraging qualities in the human animal that liberals tend to gloss over – and put on display – is the inability to know when to stop if left unchecked.

We see it Washington, D.C. when fly-by-night, who-did-it-and-ran Democrat legislation is rushed through Congress without debate, balance or the ability to actually read what’s being passed into law, i.e. the Messianic Stimulus Bill and Pelosi’s Cap And Trade disaster.

Here in New York City, Republicans on the City Council are as common as Jackie Mason albums in the Gaza Strip. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has already spit upon the will of the people of his city by usurping term limits.

Unchecked power, indeed.

The fact remains that there is no child or teenager that has ever died because of cigarette smoking, nor has there been one killed by second, third or twelfth-hand smoke.

An entrepreneur comes along and develops a new product – lets call it nose hair conditioner. He sets up shop in a place that is business-friendly – lets call it Nice Town, USA.

Demand is high for his new product, and before Mr. Entrepreneur can say “Damn, I Love Free Enterprise!” the nose hair conditioner market is taking off.

Wealth is being created.

As a result, Nice Town, USA begins to attract productive and creative people from all over. More and more capital is infused into the local economy. The nose hair plant expands. Pretty soon, ear hair plants and toe jam plants begin to spring up.

Nice Town, USA is growing.

Then, right on cue, the productive are joined (and eventually outnumbered) by the bloodsuckers and opportunists who see Nice Town, USA as an untapped nipple of wealth – lets call them politicians. The business owners and working people of Nice Town are told by these smooth talking snake-oil merchants that while their successes are something to be proud of, danger looms ahead. Capitalism is great, they say, but there are too many uncontrolled no-goodniks out there who want to use and abuse the free market to screw over the little guy. Unless government can protect them from themselves, the future is downright grim. And unless government’s best friend, the union, is brought in and allowed to look after all the Johnny Lunchbuckets who slave and toil in the nose hair plants, there may not even be a future.

“We are here to help. We are here to unify,” say the leeches who speak pretty words.

The old school, antiquated, free-market types who ran things before cannot compete stylistically with the new slicksters. The old guard is stuffy, uninteresting and almost certainly racist.

Nice Town, USA must now head in a new direction. The city must become progressive.

It all sounds so reasonable.

The bloodsuckers then move into power.

They begin to siphon the life blood from the area through regulation and taxation.

Slowly but surely, over time, the productive and creative element of Nice Town, USA grow weary of the leeches. While government continues to move left and grow larger, the very best people – once the very heart and soul of Nice Town, USA – gradually leave to find places like the one Mr. Entrepeneur originally found when he began his nose hair conditioning empire – business-friendly and accommodating to wealth creation.

Nice Town, USA – once a thriving city of industry – eventually falls on hard times as the wealth builders leave. Nothing new is being created there because it isn’t profitable to do so anymore.

The city begins to crumble under the weight of government intervention and union domination.

What’s left behind is an oppressive “finger-in-everyone’s pie” bureaucratic establishment, a diminishing working class, and a whole lot of people forced to live off the government’s teat thanks to liberal, incentive-raping, creativity-shattering policies that help no one.

If all of that does sound familiar, it should.

That’s how you get cities like Flint, Michigan – a shell of its former self, once the home of the great General Motors Corporation.

That’s how cities die.

So, what exactly is the answer to the question of what to do about dying cities?

If you said, “Create incentives to get investors to rebuild,” you’re as wrong as astroturf.

To many, the only answer is more government intervention – specifically, using taxpayer dollars to bulldoze entire sections of cities to the ground in the hope of reeling in out of control costs. It’s called the “shrink to survive” approach.

The government is looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.

Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.

Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.

Most are former industrial cities in the “rust belt” of America’s Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.

In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside.

Forget questioning whether or not it is a good idea to plow over abandoned areas of cities to promulgate recovery. Personally, it befuddles me – with a superfluity of evidence to feed my confusion – why anyone in their right mind would turn to government to solve these problems.

Why is it that liberals reflexively assume that power must always be placed in the hands of elected officials for things to get done? And why is it when things don’t get done by the ever-inefficient, over-sized, unaccountable government – which is just shy of always – the liberal response is to give government more to do? Take a look at the cities in question – Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, etc. The common thread is that they’re all run by Democrats with big government leftist agendas.

The real question is whether or not such decisions about bulldozing neighborhoods (and what criteria will be used to decide which areas will be flattened) is something that should be controlled at the federal level. Is this something that really needs to be added to the already long list of things the Obamacrats have to have their paws in?

If this “knock-em-down” idea is going to become a reality in cities that have been ravaged by liberalism, then at the very least, keep it local. Keep the feds out of it.

Better yet, let the free market do its thing. The best thing any government can do is get the hell out of the way.

Why is it that the answer with liberals always lies in taking away liberties and money from the people?

Why is it that the idea of lowering taxes and creating incentives for people to come back to abandoned areas to rebuild is not an option? Gentrification is a successful reality in many urban areas across the country – areas once seen as hopelessly beyond rescue. I’ve seen these types of renaissances happen myself in several neighborhoods in Brooklyn, New York.

Large corporations and governments don’t revive the economies of neighborhoods. Small businesses do.

It’s all about the private sector.

Knocking down the abandoned buildings of a community will not suddenly make what’s left thrive.

Policies have to change first. The landscape will eventually follow – in the right way.

As hard as this may be to believe, I was not in Manhattan on Saturday to become one of the fawning, adoring, saliva-dripping periphery going ga-ga over Obama’s big “date night” in New York. I did not grab my digital camera and home-made “You Barrack My World” sign, head into the city and stand behind a barricade for hours so that I might catch a glimpse of his right ear as he passed into a restaurant.

It is hard to believe, I know.

Alas, I admit to being a stick in the mud – completely unimpressed, quick-to-yawn and bored to tears when it comes to the mania that surrounds Big Bam.

I find yogurt more culturally enticing – and easier to stomach.

Indeed, I was in the city on Saturday, but not because I hoped to become one of the fortunate ones afforded the opportunity to share the same oxygen stream with him. My wife and I actually had a wonderful lunch with some friends of ours at Carmine’s on 44th Street, several hours before the royal family arrived for dinner and a show. To be perfectly honest, I was unaware that Mr. and Mrs. Messiah would be in town – although the sound of air force jets and presidential helicopters should have alerted me to his arrival, along with the thuds of fainting Manhattanites.

For the record, I’d like to say that I couldn’t give a squirrel’s nostril if the President comes to New York to see a show. He’s entitled. It isn’t as if he can just pop into his Subaru with the Missus and head up to New York for supper and a Broadway play. At the first rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, he’d be crushed by frenzied, orgasmic Obama-maniacs looking for a piece of his clothing or a bite of his waffle. A President with torn threads, covered in spit-dripping kisses is probably not a good thing.

What fascinates me more is trying to imagine the coverage of a Presidential New York City “date night” had the Commander-In-Chief been a Republican.

Depending on which day you catch Obama and his dancing Obamacrats, the economy is either the worst it has been since the Great Depression (or worse), or it is finally coming around thanks to his astronomical spending sprees, debt creation and overall Marxist tweaking.

Either way, Obama has himself covered.

Recall last week when Obama told a group of self-gratifying Hollywood lefties at a big bucks fundraiser that conditions are starting to improve economically across the country. His spendulous bill, he insisted, is starting to show some returns – and coincidentally enough, just before his big date in the Big Apple.

Far be it from me to deny anyone a night out on the town – especially the leader of the almost-free world.

Go ahead, take a break, Mr. President. You deserve it. A relaxing getaway to New York is more than reasonable. After all, infusing Marxism into a free market system can be taxing.

Picture Republican George W. Bush hand-in-hand with Laura Bush, emerging from a limo in the heart of Manhattan’s Greenwich Village for dinner before zooming uptown to catch a Broadway show, while news stories circulate on how the unemployment rate is approaching double-digits. Can you imagine the brutal beating he would take in the press had he gone on a Big Apple “date night” on the taxpayer’s dime while Katie Kouric and company tell us all about the endless number of Americans being hammered by what was not too long ago “the worst economy ever?”

“People are losing their homes in this economy, and Bush is eating out?”

“How could that out-of-touch, insensitive, bible-thumping, oil company-loving, fascist, baby-killing Bush flaunt his power and prestige by seeing a Broadway play at the taxpayer’s expense when billions and billions of Americans are homeless and starving?”

Thanks to the coming of the new Messianic Age, we need not bother with such conjecture.

Everything yesterday was about Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s choice to replace David Souter on the Surpreme Court of the United States – and rightly so.

It was obviously a newsworthy event.

Quite literally, every newscast from every news outlet from every corner of the nation made it a point to include the fact that if Sotomayor does become the next Supreme Court justice – and what’s to stop her – she will be the first Hispanic to do so.

While I admit it to be an interesting tidbit in a “trivial pursuit” sort of way, my instinct was to be far more concerned – in fact, exclusively concerned – with her position on the role of the courts and whether or not she is going to be as liberal as Souter.

Silly me, this was my focus – her record. Not her upbringing, her neighborhood in the Bronx or her adversities.

Ethnicity was at the very bottom of the list, just after “favorite yellow vegetable” on matters of relevance.

If I had a dime for every time I heard the word “Latina” yesterday, I could almost afford lunch in Manhattan, or a new Porsche.

Thus, without equivocation or reservation, let me state for the record, that when it comes to the ethinicity of Sonia Sotomayor, I couldn’t give a rat’s belly button what she is.

I don’t care.

I really don’t.

Latina liberals are just as misguided about things as white liberals.

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Lord knows I am no fan of Alec Baldwin. His status as a political nimrod is well known among those of us who think. His failure as a radio talkshow host – despite decent pipes – is legendary. His enormous success on the very popular NBC comedy “30 Rock” is undisputed.

To be sure, he’s had his share of negative press, but I am not knee-jerk when it comes to reacting to libs. Indeed, I was among those who thought far too much was made of Baldwin’s now infamous phone message to his 12-year old daughter in 2007 in which he came off as a crazed madman, calling her a “thoughtless pig,” sounding downright demonic.

It should never have been released publicly.

The latest flap surrounding him is so ridiculous that even the standard-bearers of political correctness have to be saying, “Come on. It was a damn joke.”

Baldwin was a guest on David Letterman’s show last week and mentioned that he’d love to have more children. As many know, he and his ex-wife, actress Kim Basinger, have been involved in a very nasty divorce and custody battle. Baldwin, as a joke, said that he was “thinking about getting a Filipino mail-order bride at this point … or a Russian one.”

This has apparently caused quite an uproar in the Philippines.

Apparently, this is a worse insult than saying someone’s mother wears combat boots.

Beacuse of it, Baldwin has actually been threatened with physical violence should he ever set foot in that country.

Actor Alec Baldwin’s joke about getting a Filipino mail-order bride provoked a sharp response in the Philippines, with one senator saying Monday that the “30 Rock” star faces violence if he ever visits..

…

Philippine Sen. Ramon Revilla said Monday that Baldwin’s comment was “insensitive and uncalled for” and an insult to millions of Filipinos.

He called the actor is “arrogant” and said he is apparently unaware that the Philippines has a law against mail-order brides.

“Let him try to come here in the Philippines and he’ll see mayhem,” Revilla said, using a local idiom that implies the speaker will personally administer a beating.

The senator himself is a former action-movie star who occasionally still appears on Philippine TV.

Class act.

Call it a cultural divide. Call it gross insensitivity on my part. (I am a conservative, after all). Call it a lack of understanding of the heinous societal insult that is the Filipino mail-order bride, but Senator Revilla has got to be kidding … or intoxicated … or reading his copy of “Al Sharpton’s Guide To Victimization, Outrage and Pot Stirring.” Revilla’s undergarments have obviously been twisted to the point of unholy discomfort.

I’m trying to comprehend this.

A physical threat has been made by a government official beacuse of an innocent line meant as a joke?

Granted, it may not have been a particularly funny line, but it wasn’t meant as an attack or insult. It wasn’t thoughtless or remotely insensitive. And it certainly didn’t warrant a promise of bodily harm from an elected official, did it?

Because mail-order brides are illegal in the Philippines, Baldwin has now insulted millions of Filipinos?

What if Baldwin instead called Filipino women “ugly” or said he would never consider a Filipino mail-order bride because they are less than desirable? Would Filipino fighter planes be peppering the East Coast of the United States with bombs?

Isn’t it more of a compliment to state publicly that you’d like to have children with someone? Does anyone think Baldwin would like to make babies with a hideous trollop?

Where exactly is the derision?

If Filipino leadership were even one-tenth as impassioned over substantive issues – like combating terrorism, defending liberty or defeating evil, for instance – I might be able to muster a bit more faith in humanity.

Enough has already been written about the disgraceful appearance by (so-called) comedienne (and militant black lesbian) Wanda Sykes at the White House Correspondents Dinner over the weekend.

You’ve surely read about what easily qualifies as one of the most embarrassing and pathetic appearances ever at the annual event in which Sykes decided to unleash some of the most inappropriate and malevolent prattle anyone’s ever heard there – as leftists are wont to do when void of any substance (which is almost always).

With that grating, nasal cavity-dredging voice that would have had both the chalkboard and jackhammer grimacing, Sykes broke out the best of her venomous arsenal of unfunny personal attacks on – of all people – Rush Limbaugh.

How original. How cutting-edge.

Because jokes about the September 11th attacks are so damn funny, she quipped that Rush was the 20th hijacker.

Brilliance.

Because people with addictions make for such knee-slapping fodder, she worked in some drop-dead hilarious references to Rush’s former troubles with the drug oxycontin.

How does she do it?

And, of course, what stand-up routine in front of the President of the United States would be complete without asking for the death of Mr. Limbaugh by kidney failure?

Nothing but net.

Even the President thought it was funny. He laughed.

Yesterday, however, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs went out on a limb and said that the September 11th terrorist attacks are a topic “better left for serious reflection than comedy.”

No wonder this guy is considered the best Press Secretary in the history of the world. No one can put things in perspective like he can.

Of course, the question has yet to be answered – Why was the President of the United States laughing at any of these personal attacks on Limbaugh?

Indeed, the President thought it was a hoot – including Sykes’ follow up line about Limbaugh needing some waterboarding.

(Move over Lucille Ball. There’s a new sheriff in town).

Let’s set aside the obvious. Limbaugh never said he wanted the country to fail, as Sykes alleged in her “routine.” It never came from his lips. No such quote exists. Rather, Limbaugh stated that he wanted Obama’s leftist policies to fail – just as libs wanted the policies of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan to fail.

Somehow, this is news – that the opposition party wants policy failure of the party in power.

Let’s also put aside the outpouring of affection and support regularly given to celebrities who battle addictions with recreational drugs. Inspirational stories about their “courage” and “fortitude” fill magazine pages and gossip columns as the celebrity in question navigates the troubled waters of addiction toward the safe harbor of sobriety. However, slap a conservative label on the celebrity and all bets are off. It’s open season. After all, what could be funnier than addiction?

But even more noteworthy than all of that – even more of a head-shaker to me – is something I’ve written about several times since Obama’s inauguration – namely, what seems to be a diminishing sense of dignity and elevation surrounding this White House. It is no secret that President Obama is very much an anti-pomp and circumstance man. He is, in his own words, more laid back and casual than any of his predecessors. Traditions mean far less to him than those who came before him. Thus, with that “there is nothing bigger than me” mentality that leftists regularly embrace, Obama believes everything is all about him and not about the Office of the Presidency – which is infinitely larger than any man who has ever occupied it.

el rushbo

In approaching his Presidency this way, he erodes some of the dignity of the office – and in doing so, entertainers like Wanda Sykes, who have had open contempt for Obama’s stodgy, God-happy, predecessor, now see themselves as more welcome and closer the inner circle of power. They see the President as more like one of them, one of the “regular” people, not tied down by an antiquated, patriarchal set of traditions. Without saying so specifically, the laid-back President sends the signal that it is quite alright for Sykes and her ilk to bring a more gutteral act – something more “real” and unconstrained – to a public function involving the President of the United States. Thus, the undignified diatribe of Wanda Sykes in front of the leader of the free world becomes possible.

But perhaps most astonishing is to observe how much anger still exists on the left. I admit to being astounded at how much nastiness and bitterness still comes from that side.

If you doubt me, here are two words to illustrate my point: Miss California.

The left owns both houses of Congress, the have the White House, they maintain their stranglehold on academia, they run just about every major newspaper in the country, Hollywood is all theirs, most of television media serve as Obama’s personal cheerleading squad, and outgoing liberal Supreme Court justices are fixed to replaced with even more liberal judges.

It would simply never occur to me to pose controversial, highly volatile, politically charged questions to beauty pageant contestants – the kind of inquiries that can cause the otherwise unlearned, knee-jerk, shallow-capped leftists among us to launch into personal foul-mouthed attacks as a consequence of not giving the answer they want. Of course, I am not cut from the same intolerant cloth that today’s leftocrats are, so the obviousness of my assertion cannot be overstated.

In fact, it is now abundantly clear that conservative young ladies who wish to be contenders in beauty contests, like the Miss USA pageant held this past weekend, had best stick to showing off their legs, smiles and figures and not open their mouths to share opinions on anything that may fall out of lockstep with showbiz Leftocracy – even if specifically asked. Beauties right-of-center are apparently better off seen and not heard if they have any hope of actually winning, while people like the contemptible Perez Hilton – a judge in last weekend’s pageant best known as a celebrity gossip blogger – are often obscene and regularly absurd.

More on this in a moment.

For those who came in after the opening credits, the Miss USA pageant saw Miss California, Carrie Prejean – one whom many felt was the odds-on favorite to win the crown – spark controversy by answering a question from pageant judge Perez Hilton about same-sex marriage with a response that didn’t sit well with the ever-tolerant Leftocracy.

The question:

Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit? Why or why not?

Naturally, this is precisely what beauty pageant contestants should be addressing when competing for the crown – contentious, divisive, polarizing topics, right? Short of a bra and panty pillow fight, or a game of naked quarters, what else could have the power to breathe much-needed life into such an event?

Honestly, what the hell kind of question is that to ask of a Miss USA pageant contestant? What would possess the ever-abrasive, never interesting and exceedingly infantile gossip-hound, Mr. Hilton – a man who would lose to a strand of typhoid in a popularity contest – to choose such a flaming potato of a question?

To her great credit, Miss Prejean’s answer was solid, concise, clarifying, and yes – compassionate:

I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land that you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. You know what? In my country, and in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised, and that’s how I think it should be – between a man and a woman.

A good portion of the audience applauded her answer while Mr. Hilton gave her an “I’d crash a mayonnaise jar over your head right now if I could” kind of look.

Of course, this prompted the foul-mouthed pustule, Perez Hilton, to issue a response, after the pageant, via video blog.

His response is a study in leftist compassion:

Perez Hilton

Hello. Okay. So, Miss USA literally just finished and I have to make a video blog. Everyone’s going to be talking about it. I was the You Tube moment of the show, the pageant, when I asked Miss California her question, and when she gave the worst answer in pageant history. She got booed. I think that was the first time in Miss USA – ever – that a contestant has been booed.

Now, let me explain to you. She lost not because she doesn’t believe in gay marriage. Miss California lost because she’s a dumb bitch, okay? This is how a person with half a brain answers the question I posed her … Well, if I was Miss California, with half a brain, I would have said, “Mmm, Perez. That’s a great question. That’s a very hot topic in our country right now, and I think that is a question each state should decide for themselves, because that’s how our forefathers designed our government, you know? The states rule themselves and then there are certain laws that are federal.” Something along those lines, but she didn’t. She gave an awful, awful answer which alienated so many people …

If that girl would have won Miss USA, I would have gone up on stage, I shit you not, I would have gone up on stage, snatch that tiara off her head and run out the door.

I choose my words very carefully, and I wish to assert – in no uncertain terms – that Mr. Hilton is a moral degenrate of the highest order – not because of his sexual orientation, but because of his disgusting personal attacks unleashed on Carrie Prejean for not answering the question the way he would have liked it answered. That he would have the audacity to attack the intelligence of Miss Prejean (his command of the language is breathtaking) is akin to a skunk asking his buddy the turtle to slap on some deodorant.

First, I’ve played her response several times, and I hear no boos coming from the audience. There may have been, but it was not reproduced on the video tape. In fact, the cheers that followed her answer were noticeably louder than those that followed Hilton’s comment about the “legalization” of same-sex marriage in four states.

Second, The idea that the great thinker and historical scholar, Perez Hilton, has even the faintest concept of what he’s talking about when he speaks of state’s rights would immediately have me wondering if he would extend the same sentiment toward something like abortion – i.e. overturning Roe vs Wade and sending the issue back to the states. (Of course, the people of the state of California voted no to same-sex marriage, but why sully things with pesky facts?) Seeing as Mr. Hilton is keen to reference the Founders and the sovereignty of the states, perhaps his views on the Founders’ intent – prior to the ratification of the 14th Amendment and its “equal protection under the law” provision – would make for some interesting theoretical banter, especially on the issues of slavery and official state religions. Maybe he could pen a column or two, or tap into his Constitutional prowess via his blog – sandwiched in between blurbs about Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, of course. It could prove instructive.

Of course, if someone can distinguish between Miss California’s position on same-sex marriage and that of the President of the United States, I’d be more than willing to listen. I’ve been combing through You Tube looking for Perez’s “dumb bitch” commentary on our 44th President, but have come up empty. I’m probably looking in the wrong places. If someone can point me in that direction, I’d be most appreciative.

The truth is, to Perez and his angry ilk, Miss Prejean is (at the very least) intolerant and void of compassion, yet Hilton’s You Tube rant is not only the height of intolerance and the lack of compassion, it is mean and insulting.

By contrast, Miss Prejean was anything but mean and insulting. She simply answered a question posed to her in the most respectful and compassionate manor possible. She hurled no expletives or attacks. She went out of her way to offend no one. That one can defend the millenia-old definition of marriage and then be attacked for it shows the sad state of existence this country finds itself in.

Again, to be a conservative is synonymous with being bad.

Compassion is now defined as agreement.

This brings me to Shanna Moakler, Miss USA pageant co-director, who appeared as a guest on CBS’s Early Show on Tuesday:

You know, I have to applaud her, that she was willing to miss out on the opportunity of being Miss USA, you know, to stay true to her convictions.

Astonishing.

And frightening.

In other words, to posses a traditional view of society is an automatic disqualifier if one aspires to win the Miss USA pageant. Moakler unambiguously acknowledges that one must either think like a leftist or be a liar in order to wear the tiara. Miss California’s view that the definition of marriage should remain in tact, while somewhat applaud-worthy, is what caused her to “miss out,” according to Moakler. To believe that marriage is defined as the union between one man and one woman is to give up any hope of ever winning Miss USA.

She continues:

But on the same token, you know I think she’s muddied the waters a little bit by making – uh – her question was insensitive and it’s now become more about compassion in the way she answered her question.

It always fascinates me when people use phrases that are inappropriate and mean nothing. How it is that Miss Prejean “muddied the waters” when her answer to a ridiculous and unsuitable question was as clear as a Barney Frank lisp during a House sub-committee meeting is uncertain.

What exactly does Moakler mean by “muddying the water?”

What Moakler did clarify, however, is that it isn’t possible to disagree with one’s given position and still have compassion. This is precisely the same school of thought that says those who wish to see the definition of marriage unchanged must hate homosexuals.

Incoherence, thy name is liberalism.

I must ask … What would have been a genuinely compassionate response from someone who believes in traditional marriage?
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Is there a word more overused – or rather, misused than “hypocrite?” Somehow, worse than almost anything else that a human being can do or be, there is practically nothing that can compare morally, or is as downright ugly or unforgivable as being a hypocrite. Once that label has been given to someone, it clings insistently, like being labeled a racist, a homophobe or an environmental crusader (which, by the way, carries more weight than being a hypocrite, as I will explain momentarily).

Without equivocation, I despise genuine hypocrisy as much as anyone. With equal fervor, however, I hate seeing the excessive maltreatment of the word by people who don’t know how to make a cohesive and substantive argument otherwise. Governor Sarah Palin is a strong and steadfast conservative, and the very fact that her teenage daughter became pregnant out of wedlock and has since “broken up” with the baby’s father has propelled the laptop hammering left into action. Liberal blogs everywhere have unleashed on the Palins, attacking them incessantly as hypocrites.

So much for the party of compassion.

The distinction needs to be made between being inconsistent and being a downright hypocrite. Indeed, I have done things – as has each and every human being in existence – that are inconsistent with my values. It is intrinsic to being the flawed creatures we are. To veer away from paths we know are wrong for us, or are contrary to personal convictions, is not always possible.

That’s the way it is.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to the human being. I’d like to introduce you to inconsistency.

To be inconsistent does not mean the value system being compromised is invalid. It means that human beings are not perfect. Unfortunately, the ever-adamant smear merchants who exist in the blogosphere and elsewhere are quick to pounce on a human failing and run with it. If a flaw exists in someone, they reason, then all of the positions and advocacies associated with that person must also be contradictory. By that logic, if someone robs a convenience store knowing that theft is against the law, the law is invalid and should then be repealed.

Sometimes, the strength of a good message cannot adequately dissuade the bad behavior of those that wish to adhere to it. An evangelist, for instance, who weakens and seeks out sexual pleasure outside of marriage could be called inconsistent (and certainly an adulterer), despite all the good he does preaching to the contrary.

If, for the sake of argument, talk show host Rush Limbaugh, during the time of his addiction to pain killers, continued to speak passionately about the evils of doing drugs, as he always had, but instead of trying to deal with the addiction and admit his weakness, tried to rationalize his narcotic use on the air and get himself off the hook with his listeners, wouldn’t that be indicative of more than sheer inconsistency? In other words, if Rush played the “It’s okay for me, but not for you” card, wouldn’t that be a true hypocrite?

I think a good case can be made for it.

As I alluded to earlier, as much as the word “hypocrite” will stick with someone once the label is given, to be called an environmentalist crusader will trump even that.

Climate Lord Al Gore, forever saturated in his tempest of carbon credits and looming global disaster, is the text-book definition of a hypocrite – complete with his fossil-fuel burning jets that whisk him around the world, his home that consumes more energy in a month than some entire neighborhoods, and his quickness to tell everyone else to curb their own energy consumption while spreading the word to the four corners that saving the planet is the greatest battle of our time. That goes way beyond inconsistent. In his case, it is truly a case of, “It’s okay for me, but not for you.”

In the case of the pregnancy of young Bristol Palin there was not so much as a hint of, “This is okay for me, but not for you.”

How ironic it is, in this case, that if the pregnancy would have been terminated, the left would not have given a second thought for the child that was killed, but would have spent all its time going on and on about hypocrisy of the act – and would have actually been correct this time.

The irony is that while they call themselves “progressive” (instead of “liberal”), Leftocrats continue to stagnate, if not digress – reaching back into history’s dustbins, resuscitating policies and positions that should have long ago been fitted with cement shoes, clinging to concepts and arguments with the obstinacy of an infected corn. That is the modus operandi of the American liberal – not to ask if something works, but to determine if it feels good or if it plays advantageously on the emotions of the electorate.

One old playlist favorite that never seems to lose its luster with the ever-mindful and substantive liberal thinkocracy is the “Nazi Card.”

On Wednesday, during the first hour of his radio program, Dennis Prager commented on remarks made by CNN host (and entertainer) D.L. Hughley, who last weekend proved once again that the only people obsessed with race in this country are Leftocrats. Hughley – deep thinker, social scholar and butcher of coherent English – put on display his intellectual prowess, digging deep into his bag of tired Leftocrat tricks by (once again) equating the Republican Party to the Nazi Party.

Said Hughley:

“The tenets of the Republican Party are amazing, and they seem warm and welcome … but when I watch it be applied – like, you didn’t have to go much further than the Republican National Convention. It literally looked like Nazi Germany. It really did.”

Hughley made the comments speaking with Michael Steele, head of the Republican National Committee, who, frankly, was not particularly compelling during his appearance and failed to react in any way to Hughley’s imbecility.

This little ditty went largely unnoticed, save for some conservative commentators, while the rest of the media was belly-button deep in Rush Limbaugh talk.

With Steele making the rounds and being bombarded with questions on the influence of Rush Limbaugh – a radio personality – on the Republican Party, Dennis Prager went on to make this excellent point:

… if Michael Steele is being asked to respond to Rush Limbaugh, then the head of the Democratic National Committee should be asked to respond to this CNN host. “What do you say about a host who says that the Republican Convention looks like the Nazi Party?”

In all candor, I was in the process of composing an article on this very subject, but in deference to the great Dennis Prager, who articulated my point as good, if not better, than I could have, I am simply commenting on the commentator here.

Prager went on to say:

d. l. hughley

“I assume he meant because there were so many white people there. It’s quite a remarkably stupid comment aside from being a vicious comment.

So, if it’s overwhelmingly white, it looks Nazi.

If it’s overwhelmingly black, what does it look like? What does that look like? … I would say, “Hughley, Did the Constitutional Convention look like the Nazi Party? Did the signing of the Declaration of Independence look like a Nazi Party?

Were you born foolish or did you become foolish when you adopted liberal ideas?”

Of course, there were “people of color” at the Republican National Convention, so in the most literal sense, Hughley is wrong. But the foolishness of Hughley’s position is best illustrated to liberals by turning the tables – although I’m fully prepared to field the inevitable birrage of comebacks from outraged leftists explaining to me how it is not the same.

Still, how do you think these words would play?

“The tenets of the Democrat Party are amazing, and they seem warm and welcome … but when I watch it be applied – like, you didn’t have to go much further than the Democratic National Convention. It literally looked like an inner city welfare office. It really did.”

As God is my witness, it turned my stomach just to write that, but you can bet if someone on the conservative side would have been asinine enough to say something such as that, it would have been splashed across every newspaper in the country and would have already spawned three MSNBC news specials on the ugly face of modern racism in America.

Last year, while then-candidate Barack Obama was still going on and on about how he would have nothing – absolutely nothing - to do with special interest groups, the National Education Association Representative Assembly was adopting 12 new exciting resolutions. While then-candidate Barack Obama was assuring American voters that he wouldn’t as much as spit on a special interest group, even if it were on fire, the NEA shocked the world by endorsing Barack Obama for President. Of course, in Obamacratic terms, the NEA isn’t really a special interest group to begin with – the same way earmarks aren’t really earmarks, and increasing the deficit isn’t really increasing the deficit. They are about education – and that, by golly, transcends politics.

Take two of these twelve non-political, non-biased, agenda-free, straight-down-the-middle resolutions adopted last year by the NEA.

Resolution I-31- Cesar Chavez Day, for example, states that the NEA “believes that Cesar Chavez Day should be a state holiday in every state to focus on the importance of human relations.” They go on to say that the day would “promote reflection and action for social justice.“

Chavez is a hero to the Left. Whether or not he was a bona-fide communist probably isn’t known for sure, but without question, he most definitely played the part of a Marxist class-warrior with much of his rhetoric, and acted like one through his tactics. However, conveniently forgotten by the Left is the fact that Chavez was against illegal immigration – something today’s Leftocrats wouldn’t exactly find a catchy poster slogan for.

The idea that the NEA would endorse a holiday for this man before standing up for reinstating a day specifically commemorating George Washington, the father of this country, is really all you need to know about them. Further, it is not unreasonable to suggest that Thomas Jefferson and, yes, even Abraham Lincoln deserve national holidays before Cesar Chavez does.

Remember, Washington and Jefferson were slave holders. That means the entirerty of their accomplsihments are effectively invalidated.

Meanwhile, Resolution I-51 sates that the NEA supports the “Right of Redress for Descendants of Slavery.” Quoting directly from the NEA resolution:

“The National Education Association believes that both the nation’s decision to allow the acceptance of ownership of labor were morally flawed at their inception and that a formal apology is long overdue. The Association also believes that all descendants of those who served in bondage possess just cause to seek redress from the federal government for past injustices that have contributed to the institutional racism that exists until this day.”

Here’s an idea.

How about a resolution issued by the descendants of American slavery extending a debt of gratitude to the descendants of those who went against the tide of human history by deciding to pursue the radical concept of ending slavery – an institution that predated America’s involvement in it to the beginning of recorded human existence, touching practically every civilization and culture that has ever kissed the face of the Earth?

Contrary to popular notion, the United States of America did not invent slavery.

And if the NEA (a non-special interest group, remember) can show me where “institutional racism” exists in the United States of America – the least racist and most accommodating nation on the face of the Earth – I’d be most appreciative.

But some in the the NEA weren’t entirely happy with Resolution I-51. It needed to go further, they said.

Thus, NEA issued a “supplement report” to Resolution I-51 that reads as follows (additions underlined and in bold):

New I. Right of Redress for Descendants of Slavery Supplementary Report

Amend by addition … “Right of Redress for [Descendants of Slavery] Deprivation of Human Rights.” Amend by addition on page 19 of the Supplementary Report, lines 35-36, “the nation’s decision to allow and the acceptance of ownership of labor, the practice of violating treaties, slaughter of innocents, displacement of indigenous peoples-including the forced relocation and the re-education of children-were morally flawed. Amend by addition, line 37, “descendants of those who served in bondage, or were deprived of life, land, language, resources, and culture,possess just cause to seek redress.”

Somewhere in the back of the hall Howard Zinn was shaking a tail-feather.

Also interesting to point out is that while the “Redress” issue has no problems passing at the NEA conference, one thing that did not pass was an amendment to an already existing resolution – I-16. Family Planning.

The original resolution reads, in part:

The National Education Association supports family planning, including the right to reproductive freedom.

What “reproductive freedom” has to do with teaching kids how to master binomials or conjugate verbs is unclear, but I digress.

The NEA shot down an amendament that, according to the North Eastern Ohio Education Association blog, “would have added the words ‘with no position on abortion‘ after the reference to “reproductive freedom.”

In other words, the NEA decided that they couldn’t officially be neutral on the issue of abortion.

Earlier this morning, CNN had a link to this blog – specifically to an article I “penned” called “Race Baiter On The Attack.” It was part of CNN’s “From The Blogs” section, underneath the headlining story of Rupert Murdoch’s apology for publishing a cartoon deemed “offensive” by old-school racists and victimized societal dinosaurs.

My “inbox” and I may never be on speaking terms again.

After all the ruckus of what should’ve been less than a non-story, it occured to me that it may, indeed, be time to resurrect and redefine the term “yellow journalism” for the twenty-first century. Fear, intimidation, apology and appeasement are becoming the cornerstones of today’s free press. The mainstream media exists almost entirely to reinforce the protective cocoon that surrounds Barack Obama. The Messiah is, for now, untouchable, and any reference to anything that could even appear critical is roundly disposed with.

Let’s be truthful … if anyone other than Barack Obama – and I mean anyone – got up in front of the media and said that federal spending was out of control and needed to be tamed after signing a nearly one trillion dollar porkfest into law, they’d be skewered (and rightly so) by every journalist, pundit, blogger, talk-show host, cab driver and columnist in creation.

The “objective” American press is a disgrace.

I was disappointed – but not surprised – to see that Robert Murdoch, owner of the New York Post (NewsCorp), felt it necessary to issue yet another apology for the now infamous dead-chimp cartoon published last week that some took as a racial attack on the President. Never have so many been so outraged over so little. It is both disturbing and embarrassing.

The paper already apologized for this, you may recall, immediately after the cartoon was originally published.

But like the less-than-relevant sniveling radio speck Don Imus did a couple of years ago, Murdoch caved.

Does Mr. Murdoch truly believe that this latest apology will finally be the end of this saga? Does anyone honestly believe that these disgraceful race merchants will go away now? Sharpton and Crew have been empowered. There’s blood in the water. They won’t stop.

When do liberals ever stop?

The haters have already called for the firing of the editor-in-chief of the Post as well as the cartoonist. What next? Will they be satisfied to see those who did the actual printing of the paper canned as well? Or the folks who supplied the ink?

As expected, many happy readers of CNN are in line with Reverend Al:

-Sharpton was right on about this one. The Post has a history of using monkeys to portray black people. Because of this I hesitate to only call it thoughtless. –Matt

-Another neocon speaks. I thought you people died off like the dodo bird. Yes Sharpton is extreme and can be a race baiter however even a klansman would have seen the NYP’s cartoon to be racist. Rupert gave a half assed apology by saying he was sorry if anyone was upset by the cartoon; which is the equivalent of apologising for your emotions rather than his racist content … Thanks for writing your blog, you have reminded me why I left the Republican party. It was once a party of intelligent people, real conservatives (not neocons) who had complex solutions to complex problems. Now it is populated and supported by monosyllabic idiots who see everything in either black or white and hate anything different. –Andy H

-If you’re so offended by Al sharpton then i would have to assume the sight and sound of the prejudice, racist and all out black race hating commentaries of Sean Hannity, Rush limbaugh and the rest of the ”white race is superior posse” makes u want to puke. It amazes me how people such as yourself get so upset abt sharpton but dont say or condeem any of the bigotry and racist comments tht come out of their mouths. The cartoon was racist and offensive and sharpton had every right to complain. –Tammy

Another Neocon, says the other Andy. Too funny.

And isn’t it interesting, as demonstrated by Tammy, that all roads (naturally) lead to Rush Limbaugh?

Speaking of Rush, a blogger by the name of Ben Sprouse said he actually agreed with my assessments of Al Sharpton as a racist. However, being an a confused moral relativist, Ben attempted to paint Rush Limbaugh with an equally unflattering racist brush, going so far as offering a series of “direct quotes” from Limbaugh that supposedly illustrated his hatred of non-whites. These quotes included:

-I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.

-The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.

-They’re 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?

-Take that bone out of your nose and call me back (to an African American female caller).

Valiant effort, Ben, but no dice.

First off, most of these so-called direct quotes are not even correct. Second, they are taken completely out of context – to such a degree that Ben ought to be embarrassed for attempting to use these as a point of argument. These “quotes” were used either to illustrate the absurdity of others who regularly attributed comments like these to Limbaugh (without proof) or they were used in demonstrating the ugliness of racism itself.

These things are verifiable with minimal effort.

There is no one in all of conservative talk radio to whom race matters least than Rush Limbaugh.

To those on the right, overwhelmingly race is a non-issue. Not so on the Left.

Are there conservatives who are racist? Of course.

But no one group finds more ways to interject matters of race into more different issues in more different ways than the modern American liberal.

This is one of those instances that force me to come clean. On Friday, I predicted that the re-emergence of the deplorable and wholly repugnant Reverend Al Sharpton onto the public stage would be short-lived – perhaps a couple of days at best – once America remembered how entirely irrelevant he really is.

I was wrong … and I wish to extend both my apologies and some cherry Maalox chewables to those who put any validity in my assertion.

The race-baiting, riot-inciting, hateful, “civil rights” windbag – who is often far from civil and hardly ever right – is in full “don’t-fire-until-you-see-the-whites-of-their-skin” mode. He has not only called for a special session of the New York City Council to keep the city from advertising in the odious, conservative-leaning New York Post, but he is also asking the FCC to give a look-see at a waiver that currently allows Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (owner of the New York Post) to own more than one newspaper and television station in the same city.

And all because of a dead chimp, a very bad spending bill and knee-jerk racism.

From WPIX TV in New York:

Outrage and protests continue to mount over The NY Post’s controversial cartoon interpreted by many as comparing President Obama to a chimpanzee that was shot and killed by police in Stamford, Connecticut last week.

“I think that they have sadly tried to reduce this to some personal fight than to really understand the level of offense,” Sharpton at a press conference on Sunday. “It seems that we cannot have a true level of democracy in terms of how the newspapers and airwaves are used in this city.”

The New York Post issued an editorial on its website last Thursday saying the cartoon was meant to mock the federal economic stimulus bill, and apologized to those who were offended by it.

The chairman of the NAACP, Julian Bond, spoke out about the cartoon on Saturday, and called for the firing of both the cartoonist and the editor-in-chief of the New York Post.

Of course he did.

While you’re at it, Mr. Bond, why not strip them of their citizenship, have them hung by their short-hairs in the village square and set them adrift on a wooden raft?

These are the same people (Bond, Sharpton, et al) who say that terrorists in Guantanamo Bay are entitled to a fair trial in this country, yet demand that a newspaper editor and freelance cartoonist lose their jobs for “offending” them.

First off, just about everyone – outside of a few crotchety, insignificant old race merchants locked in disgusting antiquity – knows what the New York Post cartoon was supposed to represent. Everyone with any sense of reality (and honesty) knows damn well that the cartoon was not meant in any way to be a racist slam at President Obama. I would wager the deed to my house that Sharpton, too, knows this.

The truth is … if it was meant as a racial incursion against Barack Obama, it wasn’t particularly smart, because President Obama did not write the bloody stimulus bill.

How much more clear can this possibly be?

If intended to denigrate Obama, it should have said, “They’ll have to find someone else to sign the stimulus bill.”

It was, in actuality (as has been explain thirteen million times) a direct hit at the “monkeys” in Congress – in other words, the real authors of the $787 billion pork-meat extravaganza. The bill, as seen by folks like me, was a stupid bill (to say the least), beneath the sensibilities of those who are charged to serve the American people. It was so dim-witted and ill-conceived, the cartoon lampooned, it could have been written by a temporarily world-famous chimp that just got killed in Connecticut.

It was satire.

Do the race-baiting haters think the cartoon’s artist, Sean Delonas, was just sitting around waiting for something – anything – to come across the news wire so that he might cleverly craft it into a timely racial attack on President Obama?

Second, Sharpton and Bond – and all of the other melanin-obsessed whinycrats – are only happy if they believe they have the power to see people’s lives ruined on demand. It affords them credibility. That they can insist the livelihoods of people be stripped at their whim bestows upon them a position of influence they should have long ago lost.

These haters seek to control the content of what’s published and – yes – what’s broadcast.

Can there be any doubt that Sharpton has been waiting for something like this to pounce on ever since the Don Imus “nappy-headed ho” scandal of 2007?

As I wrote back then, the Imus affair was the first real battle in the war that will be waged (and is now under way) in attempting to reinstitute the “Fairness Doctrine“:

In the aftermath of this incredibly overblown controversy, the gauntlet has officially been thrown down by Al Sharpton in his successful attempt to vanquish Don Imus from public view. With an authority vested in him by the state of his own love of publicity, speaking like he was FDR addressing Congress after Pearl Harbor, he has fired the first real shot in what is the latest, full-bodied, unexpurgated revival in the battle to bring back the Fairness Doctrine.

With Imus (temporarily) excommunicated from the church of tolerance, Sharpton has decided there are bigger fish to be fried. Said Mr. Sharpton,”It is our feeling that this is only the beginning. We must have a broad discussion on what is permitted and not permitted in terms the airwaves.”

Thank goodness he’s around.

Translated, using my Sharpton/English dictionary, his rousing words read like this: The “our” he is referring to is, of course, himself, his crony race-baiters and petrified guilt-ridden white liberals. The term “only the beginning” is self-evident – there are a whole bunch more evil, racist, sexist, whatever-ist radio talk-show scum who need to be examined and dealt with. When he uses the phrase “broad discussion,” he means that he and his ilk will dictate what is acceptable for the airwaves while the media continues to do all they can to demonstrate how unbiased and straight up the middle they are. The word “airwaves,” naturally, means talk radio.

The progression is a natural one.

Julian Bond also said, “This is tastelessness taken to the extreme and its something you expect from this publication. But for the publication to suggest that the only people who object to it are constant critics of the New York Post is beyond ridiculous.”

If not for bona-fide racists like Bond and Sharpton manufacturing this scandal and making this a “story,” would any of this really be an issue?

Gutless recreants. Or as Michelle Malkin puts it, “Behold a nation of cowards…”

And so it was yesterday, the Washington Post issued an apology – on Page A02 – for a cartoon issued the same day in its Sunday magazine. Call it a pre-emptive move, if you like. Say it was cautionary, if it suits you.

I prefer any of the following: intimidated, terrified, frightened, whipped, scared, owned, yellow, lily-livered, liberal … it all works.

Indeed, master (race) baiter Al Sharpton has suddenly become important again, screeching racism as only he can do, muscling the FCC and the New York City council, along with the New York Post, after a completely racially benign cartoon published last week has given relics like him something to do.

The Washington Post decided to bend themselves over the davenport voluntarily – before being bullied into doing so by Sharpton and company – by issuing the following apology for a cartoon that is about as racist as Sean Penn is conservative:

The headline, illustration and text of “Below the Beltway,” a column in The Washington Post Magazine today, may cause offense to readers. The magazine was printed before a widely publicized incident last week in which a chimpanzee attacked and badly mauled a woman in Stamford, Conn. In addition, the image and text inadvertently may conjure racial stereotypes that The Post does not countenance. We regret the lapse.

Lapse. Funny word to use there.

Here’s the thing …

The story that this cartoon is attached to has nothing – absolutely nothing - to do with politics, President Obama, blacks, or anything of the nature. There is nothing about race anywhere in this article, nor is it implied in any way. It is actually a piece written by Gene Weingarten called “Monkey Business – The good news for men: Women love apes.” It’s all about a scientific study dealing with what arouses men and women.

The study suggests that while straight men were only aroused by images of women (and gay men aroused only by men), women “were turned on by absolutely everything … including videos of bonobos having sex. Bonobos are apes.”

Yet, the spineless Washington Post decided that it was prudent to cut off the race-baiting brigades at the pass before the Sharptonites started strong-arming them.

Such courage.

Word has it that the WaPo research team is combing through Post articles dating back to 1877, so that they might prepare apologies for the use of such phrases as “black eye,” “monkey around,” “ace of spades,” “guerilla warfare (before spellcheck)” and “dark chocolate.”

Retroactive apologies are also in the works for any and all articles about filmmaker David Lynch published through 2009, and any articles dating back to 1991 in the arena of computer technology that insensitively made reference to master drives and slave drives.

Twenty-first Century America … where a man who associated with a known-terrorist can land the top spot in Washington; where an unaccomplished community organizer who was mentored by a racist anti-American reverend can become the Big Cheese; where a man who lied to the American people on numerous occasions about “earmarks” in the largest wasteful spending bill in all of human history can lead the free world; where a man who has done nothing but fear-monger Americans with falsehoods on the state of the economy can be called “leader;” where a man who has suspended ongoing trials of known terrorists at Guantanamo Bay can be called Commander-In-Chief; where a man who has been President for a little less than five lousy weeks is polled as being more of a hero than Jesus, Ghandi, Ronald Reagan, Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln – that according to a new Harris Interactive Poll.

Ladies and Gentleman … Meet President Barack Obama – the greatest human being that has ever existed.

Allow me to summon some of that “courage” and dispel any misgivings about any “cowardice” I may be perceived as having, at least according to an intellectual relic, Attorney General Eric Holder (who called America a nation of cowards when it comes to matters of race).

How’s this for being brave – and let’s see how much honesty liberals are willing to face …

Three words … because he’s black.

If this poll of “heroes” had anything to do with substance, President Obama would be among those tallying the poll, not topping it.

One thing that was somewhat surprising in this poll of over 2,600 Americans … George W. Bush (hated and ridiculed in story and song) apparently made the top ten – and ahead of God, who ranked 11th.

And one absolute travesty of note in this poll … George Washington, arguably the greatest American of them all, ranked 16th – tied with (grab your air sick bags) Bill Clinton and Colin Powell.

According to Fox News:

Of the multiple reasons participants gave to explain their choices of heroes, the ones most cited is, “Doing what’s right regardless of personal consequences” with 89 percent, “Not giving up until the goal is accomplished” with 83 percent and “Doing more than what other people expect of them,” with 82 percent. Also popular were “Overcoming adversity” and “Staying level-headed in a crisis.”

In the first Harris Poll asking this question in 2001, Jesus came in first, followed by the Rev. King, Powell, John F. Kennedy and Mother Teresea.

Seeing as Obama’s pig-meat spending bill has only just been signed into law, the excuse of “not giving up until the goal is accomplished” is meaningless – unless simply passing the damn thing, regardless of what was in it, counts as accomplishment. (See my article BAM’S BILL HAS (SLIM) MAJORITY SUPPORT … 37% SUFFER FROM DO-SOMETHING DISEASE).

And what’s this nonsense about “overcoming adversity?”

Are they serious?

Exactly what adversity did Bam have to contend with in his run for the Presidency? Faulty teleprompters? The inability to eat his waffles in peace? This man was The Chose One from jump street. He was elevated, protected, anointed and coronated by America’s free and objective press. Even longtime Democrat bed buddies like Hillary Clinton didn’t stand a chance against the Messianic tide. The maverick, John McCain – once the darling of the New York Times – was tossed back to our side of the yard like so much moldy bread. Before Obama even took the oath of office, streets and schools were being renamed for him. Holidays were even created in his honor.

Adversity?

Number 11 help us.
________________________________________________

Update: February 21, 2009 – 5:05 PM

A blogger at Free Republic.com called mcjordansc commented:

Read the article. There was no list of names from which to choose. When asked who your hero is, most people, of the top of their head, would say their father or mother. If naming famous person, the sitting President always has an advantage. Take the same poll and offer names – Jesus, Obama, Reagan, Lincoln, Washing, etc. from which you have to choose and I doubt Obama places in the top three. This is a non-story.

Respectfully, the idea of whether it is a “story” or not is certainly in the eye of the beholder, and I admit to seeing it as such – and an interesting one at that.

It’s true that a list of names was not provided to those who were polled, but it is interesting to note that when those who were polled were asked who they admired enough to be a hero, only 8% said “father” (down 5% from 2001), and only 6% said “mother” (down 3% from 2001).

(To be fair, the percentage of those who chose a “public figure” as a hero did also go down in this poll from the 2001 poll – by 8%.)
To the best of my knowledge, this poll was an “off the top their head” poll.

It’s sad that so few thought to choose “father” or “mother” off the top of their heads when asked to pick a hero without the benefit of a list.

Like cockroaches and reality television, old race-baiters die hard. The truth is, however, there just hasn’t been a whole lot for Al Sharpton to do in recent times, except maybe tinker around with his Turbo Tax software. The papers simply aren’t plump with bogus stories of young black girls being raped by white cops anymore, or of nooses being hung from trees by young whites.

Not like they used to.

Those were the days, eh Al?

Today, it’s hard to imagine anyone more insignificant or more detached from the societal realities of American life than Reverend Al. After all, what’s an old blowhard with bad hair to do now that a black man has been elected President of the United States and Donald Trump has already chosen the cast of Celebrity Apprentice?

Visions of Sharpton wandering the floors of his home waiting for something – anything – to happen that would require him to spring into action as a civil rights crusader aren’t difficult to conjure.

Enter the New York Post – my candidate for the Attaboy Award for February 2009.

The Post has decided not to take the crawling-on-hands-and-knees-for Sharpton’s-forgiveness approach mastered so brilliantly by radio talker Don Imus in 2007 after he made his silly – and now infamous – “nappy-headed-hos” comment (in reference to the Rutgers girls basketball team) that cost him his jobs at both MSNBC and CBS Radio.

The Post is not rolling over.

On Wednesday, they published a cartoon by artist Sean Delonas that brought Big Al scurrying (or rumbling) out of his Rice Chex and Twinkie hibernation to cry racism. (Fancy that). The cartoon was nothing more than effective commentary on a very bad spending bill signed by President Obama coupled with the very bizarre story (that has captured headlines everywhere) of a chimp shot dead by police in Connecticut after it attacked a house guest. Al and Company have called it offensive, because it supposedly depicts President Obama as a chimp, and also because it depicts him as dead.

These people really need something more to do with their days.

In truth, the most “offensive” aspect of the whole thing is that the Post cartoon will keep Sharpton’s face (and voice) in public view for a couple of days until America is reminded of how irrelevant he is.

On Thursday evening, the Post responded to the absolute inanity surrounding this cartoon and its phony controversy:

Wednesday’s Page Six cartoon – caricaturing Monday’s police shooting of a chimpanzee in Connecticut – has created considerable controversy. It shows two police officers standing over the chimp’s body: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill,” one officer says.

It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill.

Period.

But it has been taken as something else – as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism. This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize. However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past – and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.

To them, no apology is due.

Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon – even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.

Nice.

The cartoon is very funny and very smart … but let me correct the nothing-better-to-do Sharpton race warriors on something.

Obama didn’t write the bill.

True, it is certainly his in the sense that he is the President and it was written with his blessing and misguidance, but the “chimps” here – in the most literal sense – would be Pelosi and company (and all of the other Capitol Hill morons who shaped it into what it was when it was signed).
Another thing … can so-called legitimate news outlets stop affording this lying, hurtful, riot inciting, unapologetic, race-jockey credibility as some sort of arbiter of all that is just and fair?

To CNN, for example, he is a civil rights activist:

A New York Post cartoon Wednesday drew fire from civil rights activist Al Sharpton and others who say the drawing invokes historically racist images in suggesting an ape wrote President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package.

Barf bag, please.

Sharpton is as much a civil rights activist as Al Gore is a scientist.

Sean Delonas, creator of the extraordinarily clever cartoon, said in a brief interview with CNN, “Absolutely friggin’ ridiculous. Do you really think I’m saying Obama should be shot? I didn’t see that in the cartoon. It’s about the economic stimulus bill.”
I applaude the New York Post for not throwing Delonas under the bus and for taking the correct steadfast approach. Some may legitimately argue that the Post shouldn’t have even offered the apology they did, but that didn’t bother me.

I have no problem with it because the Post ultimately asserted what we all know to be true in no uncertain terms – that whenever there is any segment of the media that expresses a conservative point of view, it is swiftly criticized, labeled and attacked by any number of victims’ groups, special interest brigades, publicity-starved leftists or Oprah Winfrey with the predictable arsenal of “-ists” and “-phobes.”

The naivety of Americans who believe that blacks are not still being asked to get in back, or that brown is not given the chance to stick around, is astounding. No matter how much we shake America, she is not responding to our wake-up call. Racism abounds, along with a veritable rainbow of other juicy “isms.” The reality that our President is black, that the majority of American athletes and pop music stars are black, that our favorite motion picture stars are black, that the most powerful star and TV talk-show mogul in all of the country is black, is irrelevant.

NBA Hall-of-Famer Elgin Baylor apparently agrees.

Baylor, who played from 1958 to 1971 and subsequently spent twenty-two years as the Los Angeles Clippers’ Vice President of Basketball Operations, is suing not only the Clippers, but the NBA and team owner Donald Sterling for alleged employment discrimination based on age and race. Baylor was released by the team last fall.

The lawsuit maintains that Baylor was “discriminated against and unceremoniously released from his position with the team on account of his age and his race” and that he was “grossly underpaid during his tenure with the Clippers, never earning more than $350,000 per year, when compared with the compensation scheme for general managers employed by every other team in the NBA.”

The NBA is named in the lawsuit, according to Douglas’ fax, as “a joint venturer/partner of condoning, adopting and ratifying this discriminatory practice since the league is fully aware of salaries paid to all of the general managers.”

It’s interesting how Baylor never mentioned anything about unfair treatment or discrimination during his tenure or in the months following his departure from the Clippers. He was certainly in the position to do so while he was there, and he would have been allowed to say whatever he wanted about any racism he perceived.

I might add that in twenty-two years with Mr. Baylor serving as VP of Basketball Operations, the Los Angeles Clippers made the playoffs three times – three lousy times. That he kept his job as long as he did is by itself astounding. That one could make the case the team bent over backwards to avoid any appearances of racism by keeping a wholly unsuccessful man employed for that long is reasonable.

Clippers attorney Robert H. Platt said in a statement Wednesday night that he had not seen the lawsuit and couldn’t comment on Baylor’s specific allegations.

“However, I can categorically state that the Clippers always treated Elgin fairly throughout his long tenure with the team. Prior to his decision to leave the team last October, Elgin never raised any claims of unfair treatment,” Platt said.

“It’s hard to believe that he would now make these ridiculous claims after the organization stood by him during 22 years and only three playoff appearances. It would be hard to find any sports team that has demonstrated greater loyalty to its general manager.”

…

“I can’t imagine because Elgin has always been very, very close to me,” the owner said in the team’s locker room. “He’s a fabulous person. I think there’s some mistake.”

Since, 2003, Elgin Baylor made $350,000 a year – more than the vast majority of white Americans make – after several salary increases over the course of his career with the Clippers. Is it possible – I say, possible – that he wasn’t paid as much as others in the NBA because of his less-than-stellar performance record as General Manager?

Baylor said, “I did not retire. I have so much more to give. The way I was treated by the NBA and the Clippers was unfair, and many ways discriminatory.”

Was it unfair that he held onto a position for more than two-decades with a track record that would have had him expunged anywhere else much sooner?

What exactly was discriminatory, Mr. Baylor?

Does anyone honestly believe that the Clippers deliberately chose to pay Mr. Baylor less than others after realizing that the melanin level in his skin was too high to warrant more salary? And if it wasn’t deliberate, how will Mr. Baylor’s disgusting publicity-seeking lawyers prove it?

Nearly one-third of the Fort Myers, Florida police department was assigned to “body removal patrol” – that is, clearing away those who had fainted. Fully one-half of all EMT personnel in Lee, Collier and Charlotte counties were called in to resuscitate those for whom it was too much. From Southwest Regional Airport, all the way to the Harborside Events Center where HE spoke last evening, all along the route – and for three miles in each direction off his motorcade path – businesses were ordered closed, residents were ordered to leave, pets rounded up and kept out of sight, and nearly thirty-two million people lined the streets to get a glimpse of HIM.

On Daniels Road, thousands were seen licking the black top where HIS limo had driven once the motorcade passed. Others were stretched across the median crying loudly, flailing their arms, while others wept silently. All along HIS travel route, worshippers struggled to break security lines to be able to inhale some of the exhaust fumes of HIS car. One even wrapped herself in a giant burrito and covered herself in sour cream and picante sauce and dangled herself from a “Yield” sign on US 41 when she heard that HE liked tex mex. The blind and physically handicapped were brought to the parking lot of the Harborside Events Center to touch full-color Xerox copies of HIS image. The deaf were allowed to watch a young man wearing a rubber Obama mask communicate articulately in sign language the way HE might do if he couldn’t hear.

Before HIS arrival, devotees were ushered in by the droves, from all walks of life, from the very sick to the young and healthy, wearing “Obama Is King” t-shirts, carrying “Heal Me Obama” signs, wearing “Bend me, Shape me, Obama Baby” buttons, pulling in their Bam-O-Matic Messiah Brand dialysis machines and diabetes test kits. As many as two-hundred million Americans crammed into the Publix parking lot across the street and into the field behind the Circle K adjacent to the venue to be able to say they exhaled the very carbon dioxide that fed the palm tree by the back entrance of the building where HE was going to conduct a townhall meeting.

The excitement was immeasurable. In the aisles, obstetricians were inducing labor on pregnant women so that HIS voice would be the first their babies heard upon entering the world. The dead were exhumed and wheeled in so that HE might inject life into them. Hundreds of children were singing songs of praise to HIM in four thousand different languages. The swimming pool in the center of the arena was cleaned one last time so that HE would have unsullied water to walk on during HIS presentation. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews was seen picking out Drake’s Coffee Cake crumbs from the grill of the microphone HE would use (Michael Moore spoke there the night before), while Keith Olbermman had Charmin Ultra Soft bathroom tissue wound up in hand at the ready should HE need to visit the facilities.

Just moments before HE made his appearance, the roof of the venue opened up to sounds of clapping thunder so deafening that the dead began to stir. Forty-four streaks of lightning then came from the heavens, illuminating the night sky with a brilliance the likes of which had not been seen by human eyes until then. The audience at once fell to its knees as a beam of paisley hot light rose from the depths of the swimming pool, morphing into a violent red vortex of flame, eventually reaching through the open roof, into the night sky, beyond the clouds.

More sounds of calamitous thunder echoed across Lee County and into the Gulf of Mexico as HE appeared.

At first no one dared to lay eyes upon HIM until HE said that they all were permitted to look.

He told them to raise their eyes, and they did.

The applause lasted eleven hours, eighteen minutes.

As President Barack Obama eventually began to speak, nearly thirteen thousand women lost consciousness instantaneously. Another ten thousand – including men – became woozy from constantly mouthing the words “I love you, Barack” over and over again. Tears flowed down every cheek in the hall.

Paraplegics stood up.

The halitosis-inflicted had minty fresh breath.

They came to see HIM, to sniff HIM, to be hugged by HIM, to have their gaping wounds touched by HIM, to have their electricity bills paid by HIM, to have their homes financed by HIM, to have their food supplied by HIM, to have their infections cleansed by HIM, to have their souls healed by HIM, and to ask HIM questions.

And they did.

Q: “Mr. Obama, why?”

A: “Uh .. because.”

Q: “Mr. One, how can I be a better person?”

A: “Uh .. you definitely can.”

Q: “Mr. President, things are tough for me. Can you pay my mortgage?”

A: “Let me hug you.”

Q: “Oh Great Obama, does this shirt make me look fat?”

A: “There are no fat cats here.”

Q: “Do you love us? Will you save us?”

A: “I won.”

Q: “Can you give me stuff?”

A: “Yes we can.”

HE fielded six thousand, two-hundred seventeen questions at the Harborside Events Center in Fort Myers, Florida last evening – and shared his tongue and onion sandwich with everyone who came to see him.

When it was all said and done – after all the waffles had been eaten, and long after the last healed cripple jogged home to wait by the mailbox for his stimulus check – The One spoke to reporters about what was truly a magnificent evening, saying, “Are you the Huffington Post guy? Or is it that gay looking dude?”

One thing is for certain … He left an everlasting impression upon those who came by car service and Subaru to see him.

Next up at the Harborside Events Center, the Frank Cox Gem and Jewelry Show, February 13-15, 2009.

Think of the free market as a fire hydrant and President Obama as the dog about to shower it with contempt. The President told America – and the world – last evening that only government is capable of fixing the economic problems this country faces. The very concepts that help to define America itself – rugged individualism, personal responsibility, liberty, entrepreneurialism – all found themselves thrown under the Obama magical misery bus during his first prime time press conference as President.

The leader of the free world sent the message that it isn’t the individual who can make things right. It isn’t the free market that can set things straight. It is government – big, bumbling, inefficient, unaccountable, tyrannical, fingers-in-everybody’s pie government – that can save this country. With his ringing endorsement of an all-powerful, all-intrusive Washington as problem-solver and healer, the President of the United States made it clear that he possesses no confidence in the American people.

Such inspiration. Such leadership.

Contrast these two quotes:

Ronald Reagan: “Government is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem.”

Barack Obama:“It is only government that can break the vicious cycle where lost jobs lead to people spending less money which leads to even more layoffs.”

If that doesn’t serve as the quintessential distinction between right and left, then nothing does.

What Bam also did last night was add to his ever-growing list of contradictions, inconsistencies, half-truths and downright lies. He said during his less-than-impressive performance that he found it difficult to accept criticism of his porktabulous spending bill from the people (Republicans) who helped double the size of the deficit during the previous administration. Yet, with his $800 billion-plus pig-meat bill, he wants to propel to deficit into uncharted territory with a spending spree that would put Bush’s recklessness to instant shame.

I’m not sure if his handlers and preparers are this obtuse, or if he is just the worst out of the box thinker America has seen since John Kerry, but he embarrasses himself when he is away from the nestling warmth of his teleprompter.

No one likes to give a hard time to those who have come down off the cross to save humanity, but how about some honest analysis?

This works part and parcel with the President’s fractured view of his own country – his misguided, university-constructed, leftist take on the greatest country the world has ever known.

It is frightening, but no one should be surprised now. The tone for the Obama-Nation was set on January 20, 2009 in what was an otherwise sleepy and forgettable inaugural address.

Recall The One said:

“Our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.”

How many of you, when you heard those words, took pause to say to yourselves, “Wow, the Bush years really are over.”

If ever something more provably untrue were uttered by a President, it’s not immediately popping into my head. How exactly is the safety of the United States enhanced in any way because of how just our cause is? Where in all of human history has a cause served to strengthen the security of a people? That such a statement can be made without any serious scrutiny or backlash (outside of conservatives who pay attention) is utterly astounding. No country’s security ever emanates from the justness of a cause.

Security emanates from a strong military. Period.

Were the Jews of Nazi Germany more secure because of the justness of their cause?

Can I now keep my doors unlocked at night because I am a just man?

What poppycock.

The security of the United States emanates from the men and women who serve in the armed forces.

Then, there was this little ditty, extracted directly from the multiculturalist’s songbook:

“We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.”

This country may be comprised of people from every corner of the world, but it is patently false - and in no way defensible - to assert that this country has been shaped by every language and culture.

How exactly?

Undoubtedly, one could probably find just about every one of world’s languages spoken somewhere in the United States, but the influence of Hindi and Latvian on the United States is nil. The role of Farsi and Burmese in forming the cultural landscape of America is nonexistant. Even the effect of Zulu on American life is negligible.

And as deplorable as it is for anti-religious revisionists to have to admit any prevailing Christian influence, this country has not been shaped by Hindus or Muslims, despite ongoing attempts to reconstruct American history into an all-inclusive, everybody-influenced-everything fairy-tale.

Culturally, this country exists in the English tradition, shaped by its Judeo-Christian value system. Period.

This is not a matter of opinion.

But worry not … just a little while ago, the Obama spendulous bill passed in the Senate, 61-37. America is well on the way to a “fundamentally transformed” future filled with big government band-aids, astronomical deficits and encroaching tyranny.

Once upon a time, when radio was still paying my bills, I took the calculated risk of veering away from all of the easy Monica Lewinsky chatter and dedicated an hour of airtime to the idea of retiring the number “3” throughout Major League Baseball in honor of the game’s most important – and arguably greatest – player of all, Babe Ruth. Jackie Robinson’s “42” had recently been retired – something that seemed perfectly fine to me – but it occurred to me that if Robinson was being honored by such an unprecedented move, it made at least as much sense to retire the Babe’s number the same way.

That was eleven years ago. I stand by it today.

Baseball was America’s game in the 1940s. It wasn’t even close. That Robinson broke the twentieth-century color barrier in Major League Baseball had more of an impact on the desegregation of America than anything could have at the time. It cannot be overstated. It is hardly deniable.

Yet, Robinson’s tribute – rightly deserved – was based on his skin color. That doesn’t belittle it. I don’t begrudge it. It is what it is. I applaude it.

Indeed, in purely baseball terms, he did have some very good years with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was the very first Rookie of the Year in 1947. Between 1948 and 1954 he never finished with a batting average below .308. In 1949 – his best year – he was the league’s most valuable player, hitting .342, knocking in 124 runs and scoring 122 times. He was the catalyst for six pennant-winning teams, including the Dodgers’ only world title in Brooklyn in 1955. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1962. Perhaps most significant to the game itself is the fact that Robinson brought a faster, sleeker, more dynamic style of play to Major League Baseball – a style imported from the Negro Leagues. He was one of the most exciting players ever to put on spikes.

Let’s be clear, I love Jackie Robinson. I have a shrine to him and the Brooklyn Dodgers here in my office (baseball geek that I am). He ushered the way for the best black baseball players to finally take their rightful place along the game’s best white ball players in the Major Leagues.

Still, it was his societal imprint – as important, profound and influential as any during the “Civil Rights” era – that prompted the retirement of his number “42.”

With that in mind, I’d like, for a moment, to talk about the game itself.

Two decades before Robinson crossed the color-line in baseball, the country was Bambino crazy.

George Herman “Babe” Ruth’s impact on both the game of baseball and the American culture is unparalleled in all of sports history. Think of Michael Jordan at the height of his fame and multiply it ten fold. (More on the “fame” aspect of Ruth in a moment).

My argument for the retirement of Ruth’s number is founded on how he impacted the game. It is impossible to overstate what Babe Ruth did.

Babe Ruth owned the game of baseball like no other ever has. He was so dominant that rules were actually changed because of him. He, in fact, single-handedly revitalized the game after the dark days of “Black Sox” scandal threatened to bring baseball down for good. He put up numbers that put entire teams to shame. To this day, he is the benchmark of excellence, the gauge by which all others are measured, and is synonymous with being the best. “That guy is the Babe Ruth of ________________________”

Seventy-four years after he retired, he still holds many records.

Twelve times, Ruth led the American League in home runs (Eleven of those times, he tied or led both leagues). His dominance was such that in 1920, when he hit 54 home runs, he had more dingers than every other team in the majors, except for the Philadelphia Phillies, who cracked 64. To further put his accomplishments in perspective, through Ruth’s first six seasons, he had only 49 career home runs (He predominantly pitched in those years). Over the next 15 years, he would average 44 home runs a year.

Ruth led the American League in slugging 13 times (12 of those years leading the majors). Between 1920 and 1924, Ruth’s slugging average was an unheard of .774. Ruth’s lifetime slugging percentage is .690 – still the best of all time. Eight times he led the league in runs scored and six times in RBIs. He led the league in walks 11 times, OPS 13 times and still holds the record for highest career OPS at 1.164. He has an amazing career on-base percentage of .474, number two all-time behind Ted Williams.

When Ruth called it a career, his total of 714 home runs was not only the all-time record, it was almost twice as much as the next person on that list, Lou Gehrig, who had 378 at the time.

He still sits in the top five of many all-time offensive categories. (Remember that he really didn’t start batting with any significant regularity until his fifth season – and in his last season, he had only 72 at bats).

He is fourth in all-time runs scored (2174), Third in home runs (714), Second in RBIs (2217), Third in walks (2062), Fourth in extra-base hits (1356).

Arguably the most impressive statistic considering all of the Babe’s accomplishments is the one that probably gets the least amount of play – his batting average. He wasn’t just good – he was phenomenal. He was simply one of the greatest average hitters of all-time. Only eight players in all of baseball history have higher lifetime batting averages than Ruth’s amazing .342.

During a seven year stretch between 1920 and 1926, Ruth hit .357 – including one year where he hit a painfully “average” .290 and another where hit “only” .315.

Debatably, the greatest single season in baseball history is Ruth’s 1921 showing.

In 152 games, Ruth hit .378 with 59 home runs and 171 RBIs. He scored 177 runs, walked 145 times, had 44 doubles and – yes – 16 triples! (You go, big guy!) His slugging percentage that year was an astronomical .846. He even stole 17 bases. His 457 total bases that year is still a single-season record.

Unbelievably, Ruth only ever won one batting title – in 1924 when he hit .378. He had the great “misfortune” of playing at the same time as George Sisler, Al Simmons and Harry Heilmann.

In 1923, Ruth hit .393 and did not win the batting title. In fact, seven times Ruth hit .356 or higher and did not snag the batting crown.

He is still the only player to have a season with at least 200 hits and 150 walks.

In 1969, he was named baseball’s Greatest Player Ever in a ballot commemorating the 100th anniversary of professional baseball. In 1998, The Sporting News ranked Ruth Number 1 on the list of “Baseball’s 100 Greatest Players.” In 1999, baseball fans named Ruth to the Major League Baseball.

To this day, towering homeruns are still referred to as “Ruthian.”

At a time when the game’s future was, at best, uncertain, he saved the game of baseball.

By himself saved it. Gave it new life. Brought it into the game’s golden age.

That alone makes this discussion legitimate.

In terms of celebrity, Ruth was, indeed, “the Beatles” of his time, and then some. He was the first real American sports hero – and he rewrote not only the record books, but he changed the nature of “fame” itself. People from all walks of life wanted to be seen with him. Every schoolboy wanted to be like him. He was a larger-than-life attraction, drawing crowds wherever he went. He was a star of the highest order. His fame far transcended the game he played.

He is firmly woven into the rug of American culture.

Retiring Babe Ruth’s number “3” is something that will almost certainly never happen – and maybe it shouldn’t. Who knows? It certainly makes for a lively discussion.

But if there is any number that deserves to be retired, in my most humble opinion, it’s the man from Baltimore who changed America’s game forever.

Yesterday was the Babe’s birthday. Happy belated birthday, Babe.

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The city of Nashville, Tennessee has decided that it will not become an English-only city. Yesterday, voters there gave a thumbs-down to a proposal – called “English First” – that proponents say would have not only united the city but saved money. It would have mandated that the government there conduct its daily affairs in English.

Opponents say becoming an English-only city could have given Nashville a “bad reputation.”

Business leaders, academics, religious leaders, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and Gov. Phil Bredesen argued the measure would tarnish the city’s welcoming image, harm tourism and business recruitment and endanger federal funding for many city services.

…

Supporter Glenda Paul, 35, said having one language is an important part of keeping government small as she exited a voting precinct Thursday.

“If I moved to France to start a business, I would be expected to speak French and that doesn’t mean that I am not welcome there. It just means I need to respect the language.”

But Claire King, 31, who lives in East Nashville, said Thursday that she voted against the amendment because “it sends a message of intolerance.” She said she thought multiple perspectives and languages enrich to the city’s culture.

I am beginning to believe that the word “intolerance” is genetically engineered into the DNA of liberals and jelly-spined Republicans – or at the very least, is easily contracted in areas susceptible to the spread of infection, like universities and in front of television sets. It is the “Obama” of buzz words – fashionable, attention-grabbing, sounding good on the surface but lacking substance.

There is nothing – repeat nothing – intolerant, in any way, on any level, about affirming English as the official language of any community in the United States. It is, after all (to sound painfully obvious), the language of America. This country quite literally functions in English. It has since its inception. The founding documents were written in English by men who spoke English. George Washington took the Oath of Office as the nation’s first President in English – as has every succeeding President. Indeed, English has served as America’s great unifier, through every wave of immigration, regardless of where it has come from, through the centuries, through every generation.

That is, until recently.

At one time, to assimilate into the American culture was the goal of new arrivals. (Uh oh, there’s that word). To become part of the American fabric was the purpose of coming here – it was the American dream. Otherwise, why come?

The disease of multiculturalism – including having governments function in multiple languages – only succeeds in creating a detached underclass – giving birth to segregated tribes set apart from the larger culture.

And for what? To make people feel good about themselves? To boost self-esteem?

“Yes, your culture of denying basic human rights to citizens, suppressing freedom, and slaughtering young women for not wearing face coverings is the moral and social equivelant of the American culture.”

It isn’t. Sorry.

Without a doubt, there are wonderful people everywhere in this world, but to reject the notion that there are cultures and civilizations better than others is to reject reality.

One can either be a liberal and live in worlds they wish existed, or join the adults and deal with certainty.

There is a puzzling willfulness – and eagerness – by those on the Left to dismiss the idea of a genuine American culture, or better yet, a superior American culture, an American exceptionalism that continues to draw so many people from every corner of the globe. Academia, intelligencia and self-proclaimed Citizens of the World are quick to discredit claims that success in this country – available to anyone and everyone who wishes to work for it – is made possible by embracing that exceptionalism, instead crediting this country’s greatness to its “diversity.”

Wrong.

That is not where America derives her greatness.

Remember … the phrase is: “Out of many, one.”

How can anyone deny that good language skills are absolutely necessary to rise from the underclass to the middle class in this country? History has shown that.

Thus, with history on the side of those who supported the “English First” measure in Nashville, why would anyone knowingly and in good-conscience vote against the proposal?

Because liberals don’t want what is best for people … they only want what makes them feel good about themselves.

That’s Liberalism 101 – whether it works or not is of no consequence. Whether it feels good is paramount.

With the stirring, heartfelt words of Reverend Joseph Lowery still resonating across the multicultural divide that (according to liberals) defines America’s greatness, comes further revelation that the white people of America have had it too good for too long – particularly professionals.

Gather around for just a moment, if you would.

I’d like to try a little exercise in reverse racism you might find interesting. Just for grins and giggles, substitute the word “white” for “black” in following passages. (If you’d rather use “hispanic” or “oriental,” feel free).

Just beginning to make the rounds across the blogosphere in earnest today are comments made on January 7th by Obama economic advisor Robert Reich at an Economic Recovery Plan Meeting in which he said:

“Now let me say something about infrastructure. It seems to me that infrastructure spending is a very important and good way of stimulating the conomy. The challenge will be to do it quickly – to find projects that can be done, that have a high social return, that also can be done with the greatest speed possible. I am concerned, as I’m sure many of you are, that these jobs not simply go to high skilled people who are already professionals, or to white male construction workers.”

No, this is not a comedy sketch. It is a “Yes We Can” moment meant to foster unity.

He went on to say:

“I have nothing against white male construction workers. I’m just saying that there are a lot of other people who have needs as well, and therefore, in my remarks I have suggested to you – and I’m certainly happy to talk about it more – ways in which the money can be – uh, the criteria can be set so that the money does go to others: the long-term unemployed, minorities, women, people who are not necessarily construction workers or high-skilled professionals.”

Did you substitute “white” with any other racial and cultural designation?

Wasn’t it fun?

Maybe it’s just me, but if the advisor had been on the George W. Bush team of financial gurus, and non-white professionals were singled out, would the backlash be anything short of furious? Shouldn’t it be?

All that was missing from Reich’s assertions was the rhyming scheme, ala Reverend Joseph Lowery …

“Where blacks can build streets, so they can eat … Where brown can build a bridge in your town … Where the broken-hearted can survive by extending Interstate Five…”

By all means, let’s bring in the non-professionals to build up America’s infrastructure … and as long as they aren’t white professionals, may the spirit of freedom ring.

(Say, amen).

But what of black professionals? Surely there must be some in this country of intolerance, close-mindedness, oppression and hatred. Are they to be excluded, too?

Haven’t people of Spanish origin risen to the level of “professional” in this nation yet? I could have sworn I saw one once. Are they to be denied?

Personally, I feel a bit left out – and inadequate. Seeing as I am white, and whites apparently have not been affected by the recession, I have clearly let my fellow caucasions down. I promise to do my best to not let the recession affcet my family and me next time.

I received a private e-mail through one of the blog sites where this article is posted.

It read, in part:

“Are you a white supremist? Or sympathetic to the cause? Your article is posted at a White Power website, I hope you know. You must be a white racist, based on this ugly article.”

The ugliness is in the reverse racism of Mr. Reich’s remarks – and the fact that no one, outside of talk radio is even bringing this up.

I have no control where links to my articles are posted, except where I specifically post them – like at the great Free Republic.com website or at Townhall.com.

There is not a single racist phrase, passage, word or idea in any article I have ever written. I defy any clear thinking blogger – regardless of what side of the aisle he or she is on – to find where I have been racist. To discuss matters of race does not mean one is racist.

To answer your question directly, I am not a white supremist. In fact, being a Jew, I am guessing that I would not be among the most welcome in that particular group of people. Skin color is so irrelevant to me when it comes to matters of conducting life, making decisions and doing what’s right that I have yet to see a mechanism invented that can measure my indifference to it.

However, Robert Reich, as evidenced in the video I have linked to, apparently does care about skin color – enough that he could accurately be called a white racist, only in reverse.

What was it about Greta Gustaffson that captivated so many? And exactly how many young men would you guess spent an inordinate amount of adolescent “alone time” staring at pictures at Jo Tejada?

(Yes, this is a lame set-up on my part).

Now substitute the names Gustaffson and Tejada for Greta Garbo and Raquel Welch, and your ability to answer becomes easier.

Stage names.

Yes, it was a common practice to Americanize your name at one time.

Gustaffson

Just like David Kaminsky, Muzyad Yakhoob, Henry John Deutschendorf Jr, Anna Maria Italiano and Alphonso D’Abruzzo did … along with many, many others. Some were born here, some weren’t – but they all had a common thread. They all wanted their identities to be decidedly American.

Millions of immigrants to this country did the same thing when they arrived – as did my own predecessors.

It was called assimilation.

Associated Press writer Deepti Hajela says that having a President with such an unusual name like Barack Hussein Obama (remember, he used to go by Barry once upon a time) changes, what she calls, the “name game.”

Names traditionally considered “American” tend to be “British-sounding stuff,” said Cleveland Evans, professor of psychology at Bellevue University in Nebraska. “We are still basically an English-culture country. We really are still in many ways at our base an Anglo-Saxon culture.”

In truth, Mr. Evans, we are a free-religion, Judeo-Christian value-based, English-culture country – the most accommodating, least racist nation in all the world – but I digress.

He (Cleveland Evans) pointed out that immigrants have long had a history of changing their names to fit in more with the United States, or have even had others change it for them.

And there wasn’t a damn thing wrong with that.

Immigrants to the United States were deliberately making the effort to “fit in.”

In school they used to teach the phrase E Pluribus Unum? Remember that one? Quaint, I know … but I like it.

Obama, born in Hawaii and named after his Kenyan father, went by Barry for some years before deciding to use his full first name.

Electing someone named Barack Obama president reflects a shift in attitudes about names that’s been going on in American society for the past few decades, says Laura Wattenberg, a name expert and author who runs the blog The Baby Name Wizard.

Wait.

(Reading that last line over a few times).

Electing Obama reflected a shift in attitudes about names? What on earth does that mean? His name was part of his appeal then?

So, America is finally starting to throw off the century-old first-name shackles of “John,” “Jim,” and “Tom” for more non-American sounding names?

And this “unshackling” of the stale Anglo baby-name pool for a more internationally flavored one is a plus? (I’m just trying to understand the thinking here).

Okay, maybe I’m all wet about this.

Fact is … Obama’s name could have been “Saline Solution,” and he would have won.

“As a group, American parents are naming much more creatively and are striving to be distinctive with the names they pick,” she said, pointing out that shift started in the 1960s when Obama was born and has only accelerated in the last 25 years or so.

A president named Obama could break down the perception “that there is such a thing as a ‘normal’ name,” said Wattenberg.

“It’s a powerful symbol of breaking down barriers where it wasn’t that long ago where kids with a non-English name would go to school and teachers would routinely change it. The president having a non-English name is a sign that we’re not squeezing everyone into that box,” she said.

Here we go again – more sub-groups of Americans breaking out of “boxes.”

Sometimes, to read about this country from Leftocrats, you’d have to believe we come in just under Nazi Germany, toothaches and painful rectal itch in terms of goodness.

I’m sorry, there is such a thing as a normal name, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Please don’t misunderstand my point.

Tejada

I am not saying that naming a child something unusual and unique is a bad thing, or shouldn’t be done. I certainly don’t want jackbooted nomenclature squads taking to maternity wards across the map making sure Anglo-sounding names are committed to birth certificates.

Rather, I despair at the slow erosion of my nation’s culture.

Wishing to Americanize one’s name spoke volumes about the desire to become part of the already existing fabric – a place so desired by people from every corner of the world that they were willing to abandon the lives they knew for the opportunity to become an American. It was as patriotic a gesture as any.

It was beautiful.

If there has been any “shift” in recent decades, it is the desire not to celebrate the American ideals and values that have served to unify people from diverse backgrounds the world over. (Again, think E Pluribus Unum here – Out of Many, One). It is, rather, the celebration – and amplification – of that diversity, i.e., multiculturalism, that is emphasized in place of the American ideal.

I’m certain to get some e-mails saying things like, “What’s with you, Roman? What are you saying? You want everyone named Michael? Or Jennifer? You idiot!“

Nope.

Not at all.

Rather, it is commentary on the bigger issue of the slow disintegration of an explicit American culture – one I happen to revere very much.

I like the “box” we have here.

By the way … Danny Kaye, Danny Thomas, John Denver, Anne Bancroft and Alan Alda.